Surface RT ignores my modified Power Options plan settings

Anonymous
2012-10-31T23:45:20+00:00

Under "Power Options" I changed the plan settings for when "Plugged in".  I selected 5 hours under "Put the computer to sleep".  It ignores this setting entirely and puts the tablet to sleep after 2 minutes.  Yes I tested this after plugging in my tablet.  Pretty frustrating really.

Surface | Other

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Anonymous
2013-11-30T08:11:40+00:00

Hi Steven_B

My Surface is working fine with movies after the latest update. No problems when viewing movies.

THANKS.....

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Anonymous
2013-02-12T22:49:26+00:00

Hello TimCruise,

In Power Options, instead of using the Balanced settings create a new power plan, set your Dim and Sleep settings there, when you are done be sure it is the selected plan.

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Anonymous
2012-12-29T21:56:32+00:00

Can you tell us more about how you are watching these videos - from Internet Explorer 10 from the Start screen or the Desktop, from a SD card, from Xbox videos, or?

You can control when the Surface 'hibernates'.

Try this:

  1. In the Start screen, type Control - then select Control Panel.
  2. In the upper right hand corner click or touch Category and change it to Large Icons.
  3. Scroll down and select Power Options. Select "Change Plan Settings". You'll find two different settings, one for battery, one for Plugged in. Set the Dim Display and Put the Computer to sleep settings where you would like them, you'll also see a sliding bar below that allows you to set the amount of dimming. Be sure to select Save Changes at the bottom of the page before you exit.

I hope this helps!

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Anonymous
2012-12-22T04:39:31+00:00

this only works if you are not connected to Exchange Server.  if you have exchange email, the company rules take over (10 mins for me).  To make it not ever go blank, go to the mobility center (press the windows key + X) and in the presentation area, turn presenation mode on.  Now it will never blank out (but then you need to turn the screen off when not using it to preserve battery life).

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Anonymous
2012-12-21T19:43:35+00:00

Absolutely, you can try this:

  1. In the Start screen, type Control - then select Control Panel.
  2. In the upper right hand corner click or touch Category and change it to Large Icons. Scroll down and select Power Options.
  3. To the Right of 'Balanced' you'll see blue text that says 'Change plan settings', select it.
  4. Reset the time for 'Battery' and 'Plugged in' for both 'Dim the display' and 'Put the computer to sleep' where you would like them.  Click or touch Save changes.  

I hope that works for you!

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Anonymous
2012-12-01T20:12:55+00:00

In the Start screen, type Control - then select Control Panel. In the upper right hand corner click or touch Category and change it to Large Icons. Scroll down and select Power Options. To the Right of 'Balanced' you'll see blue text that says 'Change plan settings', select it. Reset the time for 'Battery' and 'Plugged in' for both 'Dim the display' and 'Put the computer to sleep' where you would like them.  Click or touch Save changes.

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Anonymous
2012-11-29T18:36:54+00:00

Where you using Xbox Video to watch the video? I think the app can prevent the screen from being dimmed or turned off.

For example, I watched a video using the Netflix app and the screen didn't dim or turn off.

Kate

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Anonymous
2012-11-29T17:56:45+00:00

Hey Craig, you can set up a power plan for your Surface that will prevent it from dimming the screen or going in to sleep mode. Swipe in from the right side to bring up your Charms bar, choose the Search icon and type in "power", then hit the little Settings tab under your search bar.  Choose "Power Options". This will bring you to the Desktop and open a window in the Control Panel. You can take your time and explore this interface, or just hit "Change plan settings" and set up your Surface to sleep only after a certain number of hours, or even never sleep. There are options for when you're running on battery as well as for when your Surface is plugged in. If you're going to make it never dim and never sleep, you may want to keep it plugged in while watching movies to prevent your Surface from draining its charge. There are a LOT of options to explore in Power Options, check 'em out after the movie!

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Anonymous
2012-11-26T00:04:39+00:00

I have found an app called "Screen Sleep Preventer", it's a free download in the Windows Store. Having this app open on the screen, even snapped to 1/3 of the screen, will keep your Surface from going into sleep mode. The app or site you are using to stream audio can be snapped to the other 2/3 of your screen. It is a little ridiculous, but it seems to work as advertised.

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Anonymous
2012-11-13T01:09:20+00:00

Hello Susieqqq123, 

Sorry to see audio streaming is not meeting your level of satisfaction. This is an issue we are investigating. Currently the only workaround is modifying your sleep settings. To do this:

  1. From the Modern Screen select the Desktop App.
  2. Touch or Click the Battery Icon in the Notification Area.
  3. Select "More Power Options" from the popup that appears.
  4. On the next screen, look for "Change plan settings".
  5. On the next screen, set adjust the settings to increase Wake time.

I hope this proves a suitable workaround. If you have any other questions don't hesitate to ask.

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Anonymous
2012-11-02T00:16:22+00:00

Yes I am logged in as an administrator.  I took somebody's suggestion and created an alternate power plan and it is now working.  Definitely a bug somewhere.

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Anonymous
2012-11-01T13:39:31+00:00

I made changes to both On battery and Plugged in on the Balanced plan and the system ignored both.  I then created my own power plan and the system adhered to those settings.  Definitely a bug but creating another power plan appears to be a work around.

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Anonymous
2012-10-27T13:37:48+00:00

From Start

Click on Desktop

In the bottom right click on the battery icon in the systray

Click More power options

Click Change Plan Settings

Change the Sleep time and other settings

Click Save Changes

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-02-06T22:34:54+00:00

    I had a different problem.  I changed the default Surface power options to Shutdown at a critical battery level set to 12%.  I also have my Surface set supposedly when running on battery to go to sleep after 2 minutes.

    So I left my Surface RT running with Outlook.com open in Internet Explorer while using my desktop PC.  The battery level was at about 50% or so.  (think Windows Store app was also running, too).

    Came back after about 2 hours to find my battery level at 2%.  The Surface obviously had neither gone to sleep nor shut itself down at the 12% battery level.  And what would eat up so much battery power in just about 2 to 3 hours of sitting around?  I wasn't touching the keyboard.  Screen was not facing me so I have no idea if it was on the whole time.  Perhaps the active ads in Outlook.com very busy updating, burning energy.

    Only having a 2% battery charge can be very damaging to your Li-ion battery.  At low charge levels, acid builds up, royally screwing your battery.  So perhaps Microsoft has a serious Power Options/Outlook.com (?) problem here.  Something is very rotten in Denmark.

    I will try creating a brand new Power Options plan and from now on, I'm certainly not walking away from my Surface RT tablet with Internet Explorer running Outlook.com.

    UPDATE:  One further oddity about the Power Options is that I found my Display Brightness was set at 16% as I want it to be and I probably got to that state by adjusting the Screen settings reached by swiping in wards from the right side of the screen.  Strangely enough in Power Options, the Dimmed Display Brightness remained at 50%.  So it's possible that my battery depletion fiasco could have happened because of these display settings.  Two minutes passes.  For some reason (Outlook.com?), my Surface decides not to sleep but the Dimmed Display Brightness kicks in and jacks up my screen brightness to 50%.  Since I never saw my Surface the whole time the battery was being depleted, this is only a theory.

    Seems ridiculous to not have Dimmed Display Brightness trail the set Display Brightness by some amount.  If you adjust your Display Brightness directly through settings, it's insane to not have the Dimmed Display brightness follow your changed settings in some proportion.  If the setting doesn't adjust and isn't dimmer, it ain't "Dimmed Display Brightness."

    I also learned from Surface Support how to run at the Run As Administrator COMMAND PROMPT "powercfg /batteryreport" (without quotes).  Get a great report and it shows that a drop from 33% to 7% occurred during a 20 minute period.  Examining the Windows Application Event log during this 20-min window shows that  the system was "SUSPENDED" and the Windows Customer Experience Reporting app was attempting to run during this suspended state but generating system errors, including a reported leak of 31 registry entries.  Don't know if this is the cause of my battery drain problem but I will keep an eye out for similar occurrences.  I put more details about the report and the event log in the following thread:

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfwinrt-surfusing/sudden-discharge-of-surface-rt-battery/e7be2fb0-5cc6-4edc-b66b-fa1a5578381e

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