Why do my external monitors fail to wake up?

[Windows Central Question]

External monitors fail to wake up

I have 2 external monitors connected through the docking brick. When my Surface Book wakes up, the 2 external monitors are not waking up as well. I have to restart the computer to get them up again. What is the problem?

 

[savagelizards]

Re: External monitors fail to wake up

I have 2 external monitors connected through the docking brick. When my Surface Book wakes up, the 2 external monitors are not waking up as well. I have to restart the computer to get them up again. What is the problem?

I have that problem occasionally through my dock, though less so of late, and for a few weeks I fought it continuously on an external monitor I connect at home via the mini-display port.

The surface book seems to be fraught with display driver issues even now. None of the updates Microsoft has offered have resolved the problem, only blunted it somewhat and even then I still have screen issues, including sudden "black screens," regularly.

Until they get these drivers right, we're going to keep banging our heads against this sort of thing. There's nothing much to do but sit tight and hope Microsoft fixes the issues. We're now four months removed from the original release. If they can't get these failures corrected soon, we may be out of luck. At that point, we'll have to accept some lack of functionality that ends up getting fixed with the Surface Book 2.

 

[tdf2001]

I am having the exact same issue as well. My pragmatic advise is this: change the Power Options for your plan to be always on when on AC. When on battery I am typically not connected to external monitors and I allow the device to sleep. When I know I will connect to the Dock, I usually shut the Book down first. This ensures that both monitors will come on (with a little luck).

I have also found that monitors have a better chance to turning back on coming out of Hibernation. When coming out of Sleep mine almost never turn on.

 

[rdockrey]

I had the same issues when I had them hooked up mini display to HDMI. I switched the cables to mini display to display port and the issues went away.

 

[mskovrinskie]

Here's a quick shortcut to fix that problem. Hit the following keys at once:
Shift
Ctrl
Windows Key
B

This forces a reset of the graphics stack and always brings back my external monitors.