Surface Pro 4 - Screen won't wake from sleep

Anonymous
2015-10-27T05:32:42+00:00

I received my Surface Pro 4 today and it worked fine. I put it on "sleep" for awhile, came back and turned it on. Once again it worked fine. I made an error and instead of putting it on "sleep" I  hit the power button to turn it off when I finished. Now it won't come on at all. The screen stays dark. If I push the power button I can see lights under the keyboard keys, then if I hit the power switch again they go off. But nothing happens to the screen no matter what I do. Has anyone else suffered from this?

Surface | Surface Pro | Display and screen

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Anonymous
2016-08-19T19:27:34+00:00

It works fine for me after the Anniversary Update to Windows 10 Pro (Version 1607). It no longer goes into a coma.

I just traveled all week. Put my Surface Pro 4 (SP4) to sleep 10 to 20 times each day, and currently my task manager shows the up time to be 7:21:35:21 - 7 days! It is actually working the way I expected it to when I bought it!

It was such a relief to not be scared to put it to sleep during meeting breaks to save battery when working with my Pen and OneNote. For the past 7 months I've had to have it on power when in meetings so that it wouldn't go into a coma. That was always so embarrassing.

You can update to the latest version of Windows 10 by opening Settings > Update & security > Windows Update, and selecting Check for updates.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-07-01T18:11:08+00:00

    About your point 8):

    I have had the same experience many times. The Surface seems to be rather picky as to what input method wakes it up. Sometimes, when only the screen has been turned off, opening the cover is enough. If it is asleep, you need to press some buttons on the keyboard or mess around on the track pad. Other times, it only wakes with the power button.

    I have a lot 1544, which miraculously lost the sleep of death problem (after it first occurred in January) in the middle of February (before the updates were supposed to fix it).

    The Surface is configured to sleep after 5 (10) minutes when on battery (plugged in) and to never hibernate, so I think if there were any further sleep of death problem on my Surface I should be facing it all the time. Connected standby is on in both cases and Windows Hello is enabled. I figured there is no use to an expensive laptop if I disable all of its cool features.

    Don't accept disabling features as a fix!! (This goes out to the recent comment about disabling everything!)

    For the majority of wakes everything worked fine. Once I had a reoccurrence of the sleep of death (at least the symptoms), but after letting it sit for about a minute or so it came on.

    Ironically, just as I was writing this I had another failure to start. I began writing this post in the office, then closed the cover, put the Surface in its sleeve and took it home. Here, I connected it to the power brick as always and then opened the cover.

    Pressing buttons did light up the keyboard, but not the screen. Now, I remember that the sleep of death would have a lit black screen, i.e. the backlight is on, but the screen doesn't show anything. Today, the backlight didn't come on and also pressing the power button - repeatedly - didn't bring it to life. After trying for a couple of minutes I gave up and forced a restart, only to discover from the event log that, apparently, two seconds before I closed the cover there were a bunch of errors ("An attempt to configure the input mode of a multitouch device failed."). These are listed before the system entered connected standby, which is the last entry before the unexpected restart an hour later.

    I wouldn't bet that these are somehow related, but what I just experienced (for the first time) looks a bit different from the usual sleep of death, where the screen wakes but doesn't show anything. I'm hoping this was a one time thing and won't happen again...

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-07-01T18:20:50+00:00

    Same here replaced mine over a month ago and have been trouble free ever since. If Microsoft cannot fix the units with problems what makes you all think you can?? Just replace it and move on with your life.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-07-01T18:36:07+00:00

    Tried taking mine back to a Microsoft store in Saint Louis.  Employee told me she was aware of the problem, but would not exchange mine with a new one.  She did however offer to replace mine with a refurbished one.  She also told me in wink wink form, that Microsoft believes the issue is in the software and there is a big revision to Windows 10 coming in late July that should take care of the problem.  She did offer that if after the July update I still experienced the problem they would then replace mine for a new one.  But then her manager got involved and I'm not sure that deal is still on the table. 

    Seems replacement is not as simple as it appears it has been for some on here.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-07-01T18:49:09+00:00

    I bet if you threw yourself on the floor and had a hissy fit they might change their mind. Or at the very least made it loud and clear to everyone around you that there was a problem and they would not resolve it. Or you could sit there and test each refrub unit they brought you and make them take them back untill you got one that worked, or they gave you a new one.

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