Surface Pro 4 - Screen won't wake from sleep

Just talked to a guy in the King of Prussia Mall, in PA. About an hour and a half drive for me. Told him the issue, made sure they had plenty in stock, and he said not a problem we'll take care of you. Pretty OBVIOUS they know this is an issue. I'm finally taking the advice of many on this forum and just getting a new device today.  The pain of driving trumps the pain of keeping the faith that this will be resolved by software.

I don't think this has anything to do with power usage per say, it has to do with sleep state (which in turn results in power usage). With the workaround the machine never enters S0 sleep, it's merely using the sleep mode that's been around for 10 years S3. Hence the burn rates, and the fact that the machine wakes.

S0 sleep is the issue, and that's what the 2/17 update brought to the table. Hence why so many had issues after the release, but those with newer machine enter and return from S0 sleep without issue.

Mikes workaround puts a band aid on the real issue. And while I fully credit him for this, I would caution using this as a permanent fix. You paid for a machine that can enter S0 sleep, I'm not sure what the consequences of this workaround are besides that you now have a machine that never enters this sleep state.

I for one have exhausted all options and am going to try and return this POS that I can't rely on without hibernate or workarounds for a new SP4 that works as promised and sold.

Great work around Mike1098.  Although this may take days to confirm as a working alternative to prevent the NoWake issue, the approach makes a lot sense. 

I have contributed to this blog several times regarding my specific issue, which was created with the 2/17 update.  Previous to that update, I was burning around 400mW’s per hour during sleep and after it dropped to 200mW’s.  In my case, clearly there is a software fix because I had no NoWake issues before the update.  And yes, perhaps a 2% battery drain per hour is too high for some, but I’ll wear that cost for reliability.

Your workaround seems to cause my sleep burn rate to be in the 400mW’s.  I understand those who contend that this is no fix, but I have felt that MSFT should provide us some software to control the amount of energy used in sleep as each of our SP4’s have different configurations.  Again, not the best fix to have each customer alter their sleep burn rates and have MSFT admit that they released silicon with sufficiently wide distributions of power usage that cause many to have NoWake while others burn up.  But, since they lost control over their silicon, having users dial up (or down) their sleep burn rates is a potential fix.  I’m hopeful Mike1098’s suggestion may provide a promising (work around)control over that rate.

There is clearly a distribution of uncertainty to power usage when sleeping – each system having its own unique distribution.  It was up to the MSFT engineers (or their consultants) to accept silicon that guaranteed a high probability of successful wake in all possible configuration.  There is simulation software to do this.  Unfortunate, we are proof that they failed.  Thus the embarrassing endless loop of updates fixing 1 breaking 2 more.

In my case, I have NoWake typically after a full charge.  My system, I believe, puts itself into a deeper sleep based on miss information that comes from a recent full charge.  After some time or battery drainage, my system is reliable.  I tested this theory by always putting my SP4 into hibernation after a full charge.  I went over a week with no issue (this is based on approximately 50 round trip sleep/wakes per day – with varied lengths of time - with 1 or 2 cycles pushed to hibernate – keyboard on or off – using keyboard to control sleep or using button).

I just wonder if it works for now, and then a month on it goes back to its old ways. I never had the failure to wake from sleep issue on my SB until about a week or so ago and I've had this SB since January. No updates or new software were installed in that time frame that the issue started, it just started happening seemingly on its own. So I wonder if it's just going to be the same story with a newer SB or SP4.