Dell Venue 8 Pro - black screen after powering on or getting it out of sleep

I spoke with Dell's tech support this morning.  Their tech said the problem is related to two Windows updates and that "Microsoft engineers" are looking into it.  He told me to uninstall KB2883200 and KB2887595 and then hide them.  He said this would fix the wifi problem as well.  At first, this seemed to fix both.  Unfortunately, when they call me tomorrow for a follow up, I'm going to have to tell them that the tablet is still not waking properly, and it is still dropping the wifi.  I'm still having the pdc.sys error message as well.  So, it must be something else.  

He did mentioned that the problem might be related to TPM (Trusted Platform Module).  By default, this is turned on and so is Bitlocker.  I'm not going to turn it off though because I don't know what would happen. It was turned on before I bought it, and I'm not familiar with how Bitlocker works.

To try to get more info about that file you could try this command (in a cmd window)

C:>wmic.exe sysdriver  | find /i "pdc"

Power Dependency Coordinator Driver?  New in W8.

That was an Ok guess (certainly appropriate in W7) but strangely the real query in W8.1 doesn't show the meaning of  PDC.  I only got that from the file properties.  Revised query:

    wmic.exe  sysdriver  pdc  get  /format:list

That one might be interesting to try anyway because it has two possible exit codes to show us.  E.g. perhaps if there is a soft failure which was recovering, the exit codes might be non-zero and thus provide more clues.

I am unable to test the ideas re: connect keyboard or second monitor, as I have never again had the blank screen issue after booting to the BIOS and saving changes on exit.

 pdc.sys file under %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\Drivers crashing with all -100 code. 

To try to get more info about that file you could try this command (in a cmd window)

C:>wmic.exe sysdriver  | find /i "pdc"

Power Dependency Coordinator Driver?  New in W8.

So, was the Venue 8 Pro originally designed for W8?   Looks like it.

Is the machine powered when this symptom occurs?

Is there a removable battery?

As for your error code, 100 is a hard clue to search for but converting it to hex finds this as a possible explanation

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff559117(v=vs.85).aspx

(BING search for

    Stop code 0x64 site:microsoft.com

)

I haven't had time to contact Dell's support yet, but I came across this post, and I thought I would share this possible cause information. (I figure since we are both having it, many more DV8P owners probably are, too)

Thanks for the info but you can actually post in Dell forums just as easily as here.   ; )

FWIW I'm on W7 ATM but will try to remember to check whether that driver gets loaded when I start (HP TouchSmart, currently powered without battery pack installed).   However, I doubt that in any case it will be the one that is causing your crash.   E.g. it is probably just a messenger giving you some bad news.   <eg>

I have since posted in t Dell forums, too.  I thought posting that information here would for the original poster. 

Thanks for your reply, though.  I haven't received any yet on Dell's site and tech support is only open during the week when I'm at work.  I'm going to follow your suggestions to see if I can't figure out what's going on. 

The Venue 8 Pro was released only a few weeks ago running 8.1.  Whether Dell designed it 8 in mind instead, I can't tell you.

 pdc.sys file under %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\Drivers crashing with all -100 code. 

To try to get more info about that file you could try this command (in a cmd window)

C:&gt;wmic.exe sysdriver  | find /i "pdc"

Power Dependency Coordinator Driver?  New in W8.

So, was the Venue 8 Pro originally designed for W8?   Looks like it.

Is the machine powered when this symptom occurs?

Is there a removable battery?

As for your error code, 100 is a hard clue to search for but converting it to hex finds this as a possible explanation

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff559117(v=vs.85).aspx

(BING search for

    Stop code 0x64 site:microsoft.com

)

I haven't had time to contact Dell's support yet, but I came across this post, and I thought I would share this possible cause information. (I figure since we are both having it, many more DV8P owners probably are, too)

Thanks for the info but you can actually post in Dell forums just as easily as here.   ; )

FWIW I'm on W7 ATM but will try to remember to check whether that driver gets loaded when I start (HP TouchSmart, currently powered without battery pack installed).   However, I doubt that in any case it will be the one that is causing your crash.   E.g. it is probably just a messenger giving you some bad news.   <eg>