Surface Book nightmare: Microsoft won't fix 'Sleep of Death' bug

Maybe, if they close it out at $200? … maybe not!

So, let's quickly summarise this, then.

From around Windows 3.11 onwards we have been told that the large amount of problems we had would go away if we stuck to approved hardware (read: manufacturers that paid the Microsoft tithe to be called that, less to do with quality) and kept up to date with patching etc etc etc - ad infinitum, all the way to today, and those ails naturally included everything to do with security.

In other words, it was never Microsoft's fault, it was always the hardware, and the only reason something like Apple's OSX was more stable was because they were in control of their hardware.

If you've followed Linux over that time you would have already known that that was complete BS, but now Microsoft is in control of the whole picture (hardware AND software), that excuse will no longer fly. As of today, it's clear that your problems are, indeed, 100% caused by Microsoft.

Not that that will change anything, it has far too many livelihoods dependent on its many, many flaws but you're by now pretty much out of excuses if you're supposed to provide a service and you've chosen this platform.

Now I'm pretty sure that the Microsoft astroturfers will show up in force and come up with the usual platitudes and rigged statistics to attempt changing black into white, but the facts don't lie. The excuses barrel has been well and truly emptied.

Windows 8.1 has similar issues.

I support loads of HP Elitepads running 8.1, and they can get into a state where they are fully charged but will not respond at all to the on/off button. I have about five that are useless because of this - I know there's nothing really wrong with them but they will not wake up whatever you do, so they're effectively bricked.

It doesn't help that they mysteriously turn themselves back on when you shut them down, so you can put them away in a cupboard thinking they're powered off when actually they are not, the battery runs down, sleep-of-death kicks in, and after that you can leave them on charge for weeks (I've tried - weeks) and they will never start up again.

It would help (and not just with this problem) if the power button was actually that - a hard switch that kills all power to the system, instead of just some weird kind of soft switch that invokes a software routine which may work if you're lucky and you hold your mouth right, but may just as well go into an endless loop of some kind.

But I suppose that's like wishing for a real live physical connection between your right foot and the throttle control of your car - ain't gonna happen because electronics is "better" and what could possibly go wrong?

The joys!

PS Apple fanboyz, don't even start. Thanks.

Windows has always not slept well

Why should windows 10 be any different from any other version of windows? I have a full blown laptop that overheats in the bag. My laptop doesn't come back from long periods of sleep, either. It's just windows. Win XP, Win 7 and Win 8 & 8.1 all had the problem.

the thing is completely solid state. It takes, what, 10 seconds to boot up? Save your work, shut it down and save yourself the headache.

If you want a device that reliably sleeps, look to and Android or iOS device.

Shouldn't Computer Companies Be Held to Same Standard as Car Companies?

Shouldn't Computer Companies Be Held to Same Standard as Car Companies? Car companies at times are required to issue recalls & fix issues at no cost. Why should computer companies be treated any differently?

I've heard Intel Skylake also as a defect or two. I won't be buying anything with a Skylake processor in it.

Either Microsoft sorts this out or Apple for me next time

Have had Surface Pro 4 for a few months. Ended up with hot bag syndrome a couple of times and the thing fell asleep and locked up until power button pressed and held to reboot system.

I don't put the thing to sleep much and tend to turn it off fully - to avoid the sleep of death issue so haven't had too many problems. When the thing does play up, detaching and reattaching the keyboard sometimes works.

I've kind of come to regard the Surface as a keyboard-less laptop and not a tablet. Battery life is not too good and nowhere near as good as my iPad mini - which wakes up unfailingly when I hit its button.

Despite the hassles, I like the Surface Pro owing to its ability to use real windows - something which Android and iDevices can't do.

Hopefully Microsoft will sort this sleep issue out or else I'll go for a MacBook Air next time. In fact, I kind of wished I'd opted for a MacBook Air anyway - I'd miss the touchscreen though.

The Pro 2 had a similar issue since windows 10 was released. It's still not fixed either.

The "Sleep of Death Bug" hit me last week...

....just on the plane on the way to my customer.

Because I was stupid, I had also participated in the W10 insider preview program with the Surface Book. (Slow ring, though)

While the W10 insider versions work fine on all my other machines, the combo of the sleep of death bug and the W10 preview, led to a crash. The machine did not get beyond the light blue screen with circling dots.

I had to re-image the machine.

You are spending 4 grand on a laptop and the main reason is the pain of migrating to another one sooner! Did you miss the whole internet and cloud storage thingy we have now in modern times? A 200 buck Chromebook sounds perfect and no 'Sleep of death that I know of.

Not wholly relevant, but I am planning on switching away from my iAir tab.

Need to replace my PC (Win7) as well.

Is it possible to instal Win 7 on ANY models ? Thanks.

Possible Fix for Sleep of Death

I've had a similar problem with an ASUS laptop running Windows 10, usually when I unplug a USB device like a Lenovo external monitor and/or an external hard drive. A search for ASUS Sleep of Death led me to try the following:

Device Manager > Univeral Serial Bus Controllers > USB Root Hub (xHCI) > Properties > Power Management > Turn Off "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power."

It's the hardware

People are being unjustifiably harsh on Windows here. I've built & installed several Windows NT, XP, Vista & 7 PC's. They all sleep perfectly fine with certain provisos:

- Dodgy hardware (especially cheap USB devices) and/or dodgy device drivers are the sleep killer. Generally these will stop the computer suspending to sleep. I'm sure everyone knows about using powercfg to tell you what is going on.

- Failure to resume from sleep or losing devices when you do is often a motherboard issue. I have had several such issues fixed by BIOS updates. I would generally say that sleep is the last thing to work properly when a new MB is released, that's why I tend to buy MB's that have been out for a year or so so that these issues have been resolved.

- BUT the biggest cause of resume from sleep issues in my experience is faulty DRAM. It's the one thing I check really carefully and I immediately send back new DRAM if sleep seems unreliable. I have the exact same machine sleep flawlessly with certain DRAM and not at all with others. Generally the more outside spec the DRAM is running (i.e. overvolted or overclocked) the worse things are and also the damage appears to be permanent. I now will never run DRAM at anything other than JDEC standard settings.

YMMV.

This is not only a surface issue.... I've been getting exactly the same problem with my HP Envy. Listening to this, it's clearly a windows 10 issue. It's so annoying as my phone is far more reliable. Some fix needs to be done for this ASAP as I'm on the verge of going back to my Mac.

Disable S3 sleep

Hi, I had that same bug...

I took a tip from someone in a MS forum suggesting to disable advanced sleep... I think that is called S3. You can disable it in the registry and then sleep will work just like on a regular laptop. It won't wake up as fast as an iPad, but it's better than risking the sleep of death.

Same thing sarted happening on W7 on an HP laptop a few months ago after some of their "updates". A slept computer will wake up in the middle of the night, churn for a while, then sleep again (sometimes). Frequently it will not return to sleep and drain the battery, with no crash dump or saved files. Other times it fails to sleep and overheats (in briefcase after it wakes up). I've caught this a few times. A few nights ago it woke from sleep in the wee hours of the morning (just happened to be awake and saw and heard it wake up), opening the lid there's no screen on, or response to any user input.

My guess is they screwed up the power management long ago, and have been getting away with it by luck or ignorance. Now they have a monoculture device that just happens to exhibit the failure frequently, and this not blamed on odd machines or user configuration.

Legal niceties.

It appears that this product was purchased in the USA. I know nothing about consumer protection law in the USA.

In the UK, if the product that you have purchased is not of merchantable quality and fit for purpose, and it seems to me that you have a strong case to make that it is not, then under UK law a seller cannot rely on "our POS system doesn't let us make refunds after 30 days" nor any other lame excuses of that sort to avoid their legal obligations to a buyer.

It might not be in your favour that you did not ask for a refund sooner. The supplier could argue that you have accepted the faulty goods, and if it went to Court the Court might agree and it might not. However, you did make timely and numerous attempts to have the problem fixed, and the supplier's very poor response appears to have contributed to the delay before you actually did ask for the refund, all of which goes in your favour.

In your shoes, my next step would be to write a letter to the supplier outlining the whole, sad saga and demanding a refund within the next seven days.

I should also be asking myself if I paid for the item using a credit card, since in that case, again in the UK, the card company would also very likely be liable for the non-performance of the supplier.

This might not help the author of the article very much, but it might help others who are in the UK.

He Who Spends $3100 on a Toy....

Deserves what he gets.

M$ and crashing are synonymous.

Now for an Ubuntu upgrade to it.....

I have had this exact problem for months.

I fixed this doing the following, at the recommendation of a MS Tech support agent:

- Make sure all updates have been installed from windows update

- Uninstall Surface System Telemetry, checking the box to remove device driver from system

- Install the surface platform installer (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=49498)

This will replace the driver for the Telemtry System with something different than has been installed by windows updates. I've had no sleep errors at all since I did this.

You really have to tip your hat to Microsoft

It has so much money and resources at its disposal, and yet it keeps mucking up the hardware department.

Not the first time. Refer to the Xbox 360's dreaded Red Ring of Death.

Microsoft should probably stick to producing keyboards and mice. Those are definitely high quality, and you do need good competition to spur Logitech to greater heights...

Hasn't hibernatation always sucked?

Is this hibernation bug really much of a surprise?

I recall numerous power "feature" issues. So many in fact the one of the first things I do is change power settings on new PCs/laptops. e.g. disable hibernation, screensavers, power button = off and close lid = do nothing.

I can't seem to warm up to the new devices that are difficult to determine the "on/off" state or remove its batteries. I really could use a new laptop but so far have found reasons to postpone the purchase.

If you bought it on credit card, just call the card issuer and request a chargeback and then tell microsnot where to pickup their junk and buy a new Macbook Pro next month.

A POS indeed

... and another fine reminder that Microsoft doesn't do hardware well -- c.f. the Xbox Red Ring of Death.

Is there not 1 year warranty on the thing? Don't know what country you are in but most consumer protection law requires the manufacture to refund if they cannot fix.

Wow.

I'd have not left that Microsoft store until they'd handed over a (shown-working) new unit.

That support story is horrific.

The only way I could improve "sleep of death"

was to configure it to hibernate after 30mins of sleep. (surface pro 4) .

on a positive note, it's getting better with every update. When I first starting using the Pro 4 last Oct, it was a piece of rubbish, it was worst PC I've used in 30 years working in IT .

Now it's a lot better, no longer crashed once a day. :)

Must admit, that after trying lots of options at home, DOS,Windows (3.0 - 10) OS2, linux, solaris, BeOS, BSD's, Amiga, At home I've settled on OSX, Fist tried a low end Mac Mini, when my last PC died , upgarded it to 16GB RAM ( OEM RAM) , 4 years now and still running fine. In the house hold now have 15" Mac Book Pro, 13" Air, 11" Air and the mini. in 4 years have never had a MAC not come out of sleep. have had other issues, but awaking from sleep is never one of them. :)

( no one in my house are big 3D gamers)

At work we are rolling out 800+ Surface Pro 4's boy has that been fun :)

Some of the other issues with the Pro 4 , no battery for CMOS clock, leaving a Pro4 sitting on a shelf for 2+ months , CMOS clock stops running and you can't reset the time bios. the only way to fix the time is to connect it to the internet, which is a pain with domain joined machine, can't login if the time sync is out etc.... :) and the dock was next to useless until the latest firmware came out.

stopped happening on mine.

I was an early adopter and got mine a few days after the i7 512gb started shipping... had the problem A LOT and now I don't. No idea why it went away, but ever since it did, it's been the best machine I've ever owned. I knew going in I should expect some bumps... I must admit though, I really miss Windows 8... it was the best OS Microsoft ever made :( Unfortunately, a bunch of whiner babies said "I'm too stupid to live without my start menu"... so Microsoft killed it with 10 :(

I don't think the sleep issues are isolated to SP4 - our new work machines are W10 and suffer the same flakey issues. I thought it was related to the build they had put on it, but looks like it's an undocumented feature of the OS.

A lot of my peers aren't phased by it; as they're Windows users throughout their life; as someone who uses a Mac at home, it really grates on you, as you know this isn't acceptable.

Nothing new for me!

I have been experiencing the same effects for years on a variety of laptops running windows Vista, Win 7 and Win 10. Totally annoying but have lived with it and learned to shut down each night and boot up fresh in the morning.

No laptop is worth $3,199

Unless you have a very specific itch that it very competently scratches.

I'm having same problems, took laptop to Microsoft store, they want me to rebuild the laptop - reinstall everything. that will be 12 hours i'll never get back. DISGUSTED WITH MICROSOFT!!!

Thanks!

I came across this while evaluating purchasing either a Surface Book 2 or Surface Pro 6. You've convinced me NOT to purchase either of those devices, and have likely saved me a great deal of frustration. Thanks so much!!