Surface Pro 4 - Screen won't wake from sleep

Hi all,

I am experiencing the same problem. When the Surface enters sleep mode, most of the time it won't wake up again and I have to reboot it.

My Surface Pro 4 is rather new, I bought it about 4 weeks ago, Lot# is 1604.

Today I called MS Support (Germany) and they told me it is a known problem. If doing a factory reset does not fix it, the next step in her procedure list would be to exchange the unit. But she warned me that this is also not a final solution, since she cannot guarantee that the replacement unit will not show the same issue again.

She also said that to her knowledge it is a problem with the driver or firmware and that MS is trying to fix it, but she honestly cannot tell me when a new update will be released. When I began to describe the problem she seemed to immediately know what I was talking about, so my guess is that the support team knows about this but does not have any solution other than replacement at this point, which looks more like a delay tactic until they get a real solution.

Personally, I'm not convinced that swapping out hardware is really a fix.  While there is almost certainly a hardware component to this, I've got some reasons to expect that the problem is in the Skylake chips themselves, and since it appears (at least so far, and so far as we can tell) that there's no difference in those between SP4s that work and those that don't, I expect that the ones that "work" may just be in the "not currently (or yet) exhibiting the problem" category instead.

The bad news for me is that although short sleeps are no longer almost universally fatal (although longer, self-initiated sleeps seem to always cause lockup), I am again experiencing *REALLY FLAKY* behavior in Win 10.  In fact, it's the same problems that led me to swap my last SP4 for the one I now have:  Parts of the OS/Explorer just stop working.

The symptom is that the system (presumably the Explorer.exe process that runs the shell) becomes either partially or completely unresponsive to most user input:  Right-swipe to launch Activity Center (and get to all settings, etc.) stops working; You can't type at Cortana in the "Ask Me Anything" box, and the Windows Button itself becomes unresponsive.   In the past, I've seen that all "Modern" Windows apps stop working - I don't know if that happened yesterday, because I try to never use Windows (Store) apps anymore, only Desktop programs, as the apps seem to significantly destabilize the system. (not to mention that most apps are lobotomized in the first place.  OneNote is the only app I normally use, but I had the desktop (OneNote 2016) version opened when this happened again yesterday.)

Interestingly, the Start button is completely unresponsive EXCEPT when you right-click on it, where you can at least still get to the menu to shut down and restart.  (I think this may be evidence of one of the seams showing in Win10: That part, which is there to provide access to the "old way" of doing a lot of Sys Admin functions, is still actually running in Desktop mode, not as a Modern app...)

Something triggered this and then it happened 100% of the time on my previous SP4 (the Microsoft Store couldn't fix it in two days of trying - it just refused to ever launch any Modern app or Explorer's Start/Cortana/Activ. Center), but I haven't seen it on this one until after this (4/19) round of updates.  Also, I can reboot and it sort of works again for a while this time, but it came back after a reboot last night.

As I write this, it's done this twice, and seems OK again after this last reboot, but I expect it'll surface again (pun very much intended).

Damn, I'd like a computer I could just use to get work done, instead of wasting hours chasing heinous bugs (or rebooting again and again to chase them away temporarily) that no customer should ever encounter in the first place....

this is still not helping, my machine does not wake from sleep and everytime i have to do hard reset

4-25-16 This is my second surface pro 4 in 3 weeks and both have the same problem of not waking up after going to sleep.  I used my old laptop to find out about the hard reboot. Good thing I still had it. It seems like after all this time MS should be able to fix this problem. I'm considering turning this unit back in and just buying a plan lap top again. At least with it you can count on it coming on from sleep mode.

Does MS have anything to offer at this point to influence me into keeping this unit after 6 months of knowing about the problem since this blog started.