My Facts <-- Do Any of These Overlap Your Facts?
Do any of these details overlap with anyone else's situation? Please reply to this thread with your story!
- machine recently updated via Windows Updates and Surface Book 2 Drivers/Firmware
- phenomenon is not continuous, but does happen several times in a span of 10-30 minutes
- happens using Surface Dock (not sure if this happens while not docked)
- affects connected monitors
- happens within 30 seconds of some keyboard/touchpad interaction, but not while typing (so far at least)
- screens go dark, dark grey (but not completely off) -- wakes immediately after pressing the power button one time
- Surface Book 2 (less than 1 month old)
- Various Power Saving settings are set to either never or 10 minutes
This issue started very recently for me, as in the last week. Which is ironically right after I got the last set of updates from Microsoft using the Surface Diagnostic Toolkit app from the app store. I have since installed the Surface Book 2
firmware and driver updates.
It's not [yet] a continuous phenomenon, but when it happens, it tends to happen several times in a span of 10-30 minutes.
In my configuration, I have a Surface Dock. Both of the connected external monitors and the tablet's display go
near black. On one occasion, the external monitors had vertical scan line noise that appeared on both external monitors, which makes me wonder if it's the Dock causing the problems, which I acquired a couple weeks ago, or a separate issue. This
might be a coincidence.
In my situation, I've noticed that the screens go black at times that I am not
immediately active (but still less than 30 seconds after I have last interacted with the keyboard or touchpad). This may or may not be coincidence, but it's almost like it is a screensaver that is prematurely activating -- except that it
only wakes up by a push of the power button as described by the Original Poster, although it may also wake after touching the tablet display.
Theory
My theory at this point, at least for my situation, is that the Surface Book is prematurely entering some sort of screen saver or power saving mode. And, while in that mode, the keyboard and touchpad are not triggering the Surface Book to wake. This is
causing users such as myself to think the tablet is frozen and requires pushing the power button to wake it. I don't like to touch my display, so I avoid touching the screen which may also wake it if I can remember to give that a try.
If my theory is correct, then the problem is straightforward -- the keyboard and touchpad should have the same ability to wake the Surface as the power button.