Surface Pro 7 Freezing and Restarting

This issue seems to be tied to the display powersaving tech that Intel has called Panel Self Refresh, which may cause the display panel to not update in certain situations (though it's not good at figuring out what those situations are) to reduce power.

I've fixed it on my SP7 i5/8G/256G by installing the Intel Graphics Command Center from the Microsoft Store, opening it, going to System>Power>Panel Self Refresh and turning it off for both "On Battery" and "Plugged In".

I have an SP7 i5/8G/128G, bought 4 weeks ago. It had this problem out of the box. Eventually I tried Microsoft helpline. They revamped drivers and stuff for an hour or two. But no fix. Then I followed this suggestion. That was 5 days ago: no recurrence of the problem. Seems to me that this solution should be widely publicised...including to Microsoft staff.

Hopefully this is monitored by Microsoft staff...

I have a theory which if correct, would be a design flaw.

Something like this: The display backlight driver circuit creates RF interference, especially when not at full brightness or when changing intensity.  This interference can cause issues and sometimes may cause the display to freeze.  I have the problem less when I turn off the adaptive backlight intensity, but it still happens often enough to be a problem.

I suspect that when powering from AC, the backlight driver circuit behaves differently (different input voltage, power path, or something) which allows it to work without failing.

I've just tried the fix suggested above and will monitor this to see if it still occurs.  But if it's related to the backlight driver creating interference, Microsoft should be able to come up with a hardware fix, or possibly even software if they can change the frequency of the drive signal.

(Sorry for the nerdiness - I'm an electrical engineer and just retired a few weeks ago, and it's hard to completely let go...)

I updated windows and firmware but have the same problem. I'm not sure this problem will be solved or not. I think I should return it.

It's interesting that the newer app called "Intel Graphics Command Center (beta)" no longer permits turning off Panel Self Refresh under Plugged In conditions as the non-beta version does.

I had Intel Graphics Command center installed and went through the setting.  It works so far without freeze up.  I was about to return my Surface Pro 7.  

Million thanks!  Awesome!!

I think the freezing is due to the power saving profile being far too aggressive. I was able to solve it on my 7 Pro by turning off the Intel panel refresh as mentioned above and the following:

When running off the battery, click on the battery icon (bottom right of the screen) and make sure it's not set to Best battery life. 

When plugged in, do the same but set it to Best performance.

Also increase the screen off/sleep time to 20 minutes or such like.