After upgrading to Windows 10, you may have noticed that your Surface turns itself back on shortly after you press the top button to put it in sleep mode. You’re most likely to see this issue with a Surface Pro or Surface Pro 2 but it’s possible that it could happen on a Surface Pro 3 or Surface 3, as well.
Not only is this problem annoying but it can leave you with a dead battery because your Surface will sit – powered on – when you thought you turned it off for the night.
Microsoft seems to be aware of the problem and will probably issue a patch for it at some point but, until that happens, you probably don’t want your Surface to be on all the time. Do you?
Surface Won’t Stay Asleep: What To Do About It
Fortunately, there are a couple of things you can do to help address this issue. They aren’t really “fixes” per se, but they are definitely usable workarounds you can employ in just a short time. I have instructions for both workarounds below but I’d try the “Turn Off Keyboard and Mouse Wake” one first and only do the “Set the Power Button to Power Down Your Surface” workaround, if the first doesn’t help you.
Surface Won’t Stay Asleep: Turn Off Keyboard and Mouse Wake
This is pretty easy, it seems that this problem is often caused by the touchscreen sending errant “wake-up” commands to the CPU. The procedure below will turn off the ability of the Touchscreen to send those commands:
- Make sure your Surface is un-docked and there are no keyboards/mice attached (either physical or via Bluetooth).
- Log in with an Administrator account.
- Search for Device Manager and Choose Device Manager (Control Panel) from the results.
- When the Device Manager window appears, expand the Keyboards section, there should only be one entry under it. Tap and hold it and select Properties.
- The HID Keyboard Device Properties window will appear, select the Power Management tab and uncheck the “Allow this device to wake the computer” box then select OK.
Repeat the same procedure for the Mice and Other Pointing Devices section as well. This should prevent your Surface from coming back on after you put it to sleep.
In case you’re wondering, the keyboard and mouse items you changed are how Device Manger sees the “touch” component of your Surface’s screen. (It’s not quite that simple but close enough for our purposes.)
Surface Won’t Stay Asleep: Set the Button to Power Down Your Surface
If following the procedure above doesn’t prevent your Surface from waking itself from sleep, you can also set the top button to actually power down your Surface (instead of just putting it to sleep). This has the advantages of making sure your Surface won’t wake itself and ensuring the battery will not be drained. However, the disadvantage is that it will take longer to power off and back on when you need it.
Granted, the Surface boots pretty quickly but it can still be a pain to wait for it.
To set the power button to turn off your Surface instead of sleeping it, follow these steps:
- Log in with an Administrator account.
- Search for Power Options and select Power Options (Control Panel) from the results.
- Select Choose What The Power Button Does.
- Set the options for When I press the Power Button and When I close The Lid in the On Battery column to Shut Down and press OK.
You can also set the same option for when you’re plugged in but it’s not as critical as when you’re on battery.
After implementing one (or both) of these options, your Surface should no longer mysteriously wake itself up a few seconds after you put it to sleep and cause a flat battery when you try to use it again.
