Surface Pro 4 doesn't really wake up when I turn it on -- hardware issue?

[Snoops8]

Got my Surface Pro 4 recently, and I encountered a few problems, and I'm not sure whether they are software related or hardware related.

Sometimes when I try to turn on the computer, it appears to boot up normally, showing the Surface logo, but then the screen turns black and nothing happens. Pressing the power button does nothing as well, as far as I can tell. When this occurs, the red light that goes off when Windows Hello is trying to work turns on, but again, nothing happens and the screen is completely black. This has probably 3-5 times in 3 days so far, and I'm trying to figure out in what situation this occurs.

My impression is that this occurs right after trying to wake up the tablet. I'm guessing (purely speculation) that it might be the case that the tablet is woken up but the screen is completely off. Sometimes it makes the logging in chime, other times it's completely silent.

I also have the light bleed issue. It was kind of bad on startup, but in 99% of lighting conditions I don't notice it. However, that just happened to be my first impression of the tablet (I actually noticed the problem first then checked the forums to see if it was a common issue...wasn't looking for any problems). Just kind of a bad first impression I suppose.

If it was just a lightbleed issue I don't think I would have cared, but if there's the chance that there are other hardware issues, I'm much more leery. There might be another issue with the sound, but I am unable to check it at this moment because I can't figure out how to turn my surface pro 4 back on...being that the Surface Pro 4's screen is pitch black and comatose at the moment.

 

[boltman2013]

Got my Surface Pro 4 recently, and I encountered a few problems, and I'm not sure whether they are software related or hardware related.

Sometimes when I try to turn on the computer, it appears to boot up normally, showing the Surface logo, but then the screen turns black and nothing happens. Pressing the power button does nothing as well, as far as I can tell. When this occurs, the red light that goes off when Windows Hello is trying to work turns on, but again, nothing happens and the screen is completely black. This has probably 3-5 times in 3 days so far, and I'm trying to figure out in what situation this occurs.

My impression is that this occurs right after trying to wake up the tablet. I'm guessing (purely speculation) that it might be the case that the tablet is woken up but the screen is completely off. Sometimes it makes the logging in chime, other times it's completely silent.

I also have the light bleed issue. It was kind of bad on startup, but in 99% of lighting conditions I don't notice it. However, that just happened to be my first impression of the tablet (I actually noticed the problem first then checked the forums to see if it was a common issue...wasn't looking for any problems). Just kind of a bad first impression I suppose.

If it was just a lightbleed issue I don't think I would have cared, but if there's the chance that there are other hardware issues, I'm much more leery. There might be another issue with the sound, but I am unable to check it at this moment because I can't figure out how to turn my surface pro 4 back on...being that the Surface Pro 4's screen is pitch black and comatose at the moment.

Sleep is broken so don't use it now. Never ever use hibernate.

Instead make sure Surface is completely off (Hold power down full 20-30 seconds)
Then to turn on hold power button down for 2 seconds.

So summary... Always use power button to turn off and turn on SP4 until they fix sleep in 2016
Turn off SP4 when not in use, turn on when in use

Let it boot about 18 seconds...perfection

Pretty much any SP4 has lightbleed to a certain extent at bottom

 

[milde]

Is there a reason why you say no hibernate? I thought it is better than sleep atm?

 

[boltman2013]

Is there a reason why you say no hibernate? I thought it is better than sleep atm?

First, if you’re using a Solid State Drive, you should most definitely turn hibernation and hybrid sleep off. There’s virtually no need to speed up your shut down or start up times, since SSDs make it extremely fast anyway. Also, hibernation dramatically increases the amount of writes made to your drive, which is heavily discouraged on an SSD. (Surface 4 Pro has an M2 SSD)

Second, in a laptop, where space comes at a premium, users should consider simply turning the laptop off entirely, rather than using the notoriously unreliable hibernation feature. It’s a frequent issue that laptops run out of storage space quickly. On a modern laptop, frequently the hibernate file can take up about 8GB of hard drive space. If you turn hibernate off, that’s 8GB extra one can dedicate to other areas.

Another major issue is that if the hibernation file becomes corrupted, you will lose everything unsaved. It’s a bad practice to rely on hibernate mode as a means of saving data.

 

[milde]

Ah thank you for the explanation, makes sense with the ssd.
I will turn it off and just use normal shutdown.

 

[Eric J F]

I've never had a problem with sleep on my SP4 m3, and just found something interesting. I disabled hibernation by command prompt since I never used it anyway; in my power options I always had hibernate off.

After running the command prompt I noticed the power settings sleep options that included hibernation disappeared, which makes sense, and in the other settings the option for fast startup also disappeared. Since I also never used fast startup, I assume that is now completely disabled, right?

 

[EMitchell]

First, if you’re using a Solid State Drive, you should most definitely turn hibernation and hybrid sleep off. There’s virtually no need to speed up your shut down or start up times, since SSDs make it extremely fast anyway. Also, hibernation dramatically increases the amount of writes made to your drive, which is heavily discouraged on an SSD. (Surface 4 Pro has an M2 SSD)

Second, in a laptop, where space comes at a premium, users should consider simply turning the laptop off entirely, rather than using the notoriously unreliable hibernation feature. It’s a frequent issue that laptops run out of storage space quickly. On a modern laptop, frequently the hibernate file can take up about 8GB of hard drive space. If you turn hibernate off, that’s 8GB extra one can dedicate to other areas.

Another major issue is that if the hibernation file becomes corrupted, you will lose everything unsaved. It’s a bad practice to rely on hibernate mode as a means of saving data.

I was just in the MSFT store, talking with their tech support people about another issue. They mentioned the problem with sleep, it will burn the battery faster and make the SP4 heat up. Their specific recommendation was to switch all power settings to hibernate rather than sleep - this is their current fix for the sleep / battery problem.

 

[Snoops8]

I've heard about the battery drain issue -- I got a first generation Surface Pro that would lose power extremely quickly in sleep mode, and I thought that was the same issue with the Surface Pro 4. Is the screen not turning on at all related to the same issues other people are mentioning?

by the way, thanks for the info on how to do a hard reset.

 

[right_mr1]

when I first got the surface pro 4, pretty much every time I used the type cover to turn the screen off, i couldn't get it to switch back on. Whether the device was going into Sleep Vs Hibernation, i am not sure but there was definitely a problem.

However - following plenty of software updates, the screen issue has only taken place a couple of times over more than a week vs all the time prior to the software updates.

therefore, I think if you firstly ensure the system software is up to date, then you can look at potentially turning the device off when not in use rather than putting it into sleep/hibernation through the advanced power settings.

I am still not sure whether the problem is due to the device being put into hibernation, or into sleep mode. I haven't worked that out. But its a good point and I will look into it. It could be a hibernation bug. I will report back if I figure out which the offensive setting is.