Solved Is there another way of starting the SPro other than pushing the power button?

[pikmin36]

My Surface Pro is now half a year older than the warranty and lately I have the problem, that the power button is loose or tilted, meaning I have to press very hard and on both sides evenly down until it wakes up.
Other than that everything works fine, just the power button is malfunctioning.

But because I have to try it several times until the signal goes through I would like to know if there is any other way of waking it from hibernate, for example by plugging in an USB-Stick or via wake-on-WLAN.

I wouldn't ask here if I had found a solution on the internet and hope someone can help me with this, because I can't yet afford to buy the Surface Pro 4. Thanks in advance.

 

[shamandgg]

I am experiencing exactly the same issue with my Surface Pro (1) with the power button after so many years of operation. Have to press it really hard on both sides and "massage it" to power the laptop. It is very annoying and at some point I have even believed device is bricked. I have purchased mine month after premiere in USA and brought it to Europe. It is one of the very first batches to hit the market.

 

[GreyFox7]

Check with cellphonerepair.com to see what they would charge to fix a power button and let us know what they say. Microsoft Tablet Repair - CellPhoneRepair.com

 

[Wayne Orwig]

Well, I think I bumped my power button against the external battery pack that I carry with me. Now the button is bad. Has anyone figured out how to get one open?

 

[pikmin36]

I now have the pro 4 and I figured out an alternative to pressing the power button on the pro 1, wich is not optimal but better than not being able to use the tablet at all. Instead of going into hibernate mode (what the power button does by default), you press the start button->on/off where the drop down for sleep, shutdown and restart is and choose sleep / energy saving.
To get the device back on you press the white windows icon on the bottom of the surface bezel. That button only recognizes input when in sleep or awake but not in hibernate.
This method should also work on the pro 2 and pro 3 because they still have that windows-logo button.
tl;dr:
So you don't have to press the button at all but go into sleep mode in windows itself and wake it up by pressing the "hardware" windows logo button on the rim.

I said its not optimal because now it is possible to wake it up by accident when carrying in a bag and it doesn't save as much energy as hibernate, but at least it turns on faster now.

I came to that idea because the the pro 4 goes to sleep when pushing the power button by default, wich means it can't be that bad to have the pro 1 in sleep mode all the time.

If any instructions where unclear (because I had to translate from my german settings to english) or further detail, just reply back.
Hope it helps someone to keep using their device, because the surface products are the best tablets in my opinion.

 

[Wayne Orwig]

Well, it took a lot of heat, and a lot of care, but I finally was able to carefully remove the screen. There is a thin 'spacer' in the button that had gotten pushed out. I repaired that and reassembled the unit. It now powers off and on again.
YEAH!
Well, until I realized that there is now a section of the LCD that the touch screen no longer works in.
BOOOOOOO!

It turns out that it slightly pulled on and damaged a touch screen cable on the LCD. VERY fragile.
I have a replacement on order for $80. Not bad, an $80 fix, but they could have used a better cable, and made it easier to repair.

 

[CrippsCorner]

Well done! Nice to get a bit of hands on... funnily enough my power button has become a bit weird, in that I use to be able to just press it down for like half a second and my Surface would turn on, but now I have to hold it down for about 10 seconds before it starts to fire up.

Hope this is not a sign of things to come!

 

[BOBEL]

Thanks you guys