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Surface 3 on Windows 10 keeps turning off

arka_319

New Member
I have a brand new surface 3 (not surface 3 pro); 64gb model. I upgraded to win10 the day it came out....first few days it was working fine, but over the last 4-5 days i have noticed (consistently) that it turns off at random times....turns totally OFF, not go to sleep. I checked my power options multiple times and it is not supposed to go to sleep for 4-5 hrs - both on battery or plugged in, so this doesnt make sense. What's worse is sometimes holding down the power button for a long time, doesnt even turn it back on....but after trying that a few times, it eventually does. This is pretty strange and i am pretty sure it wasnt happening until i upgraded to win10. Is anyone else with a surface 3 on win10 experiencing this and know how to fix it? Literally, every morning i wake up and when i try to use it, its off...then after several tries of holding down the power button turns it on. I dont want to 'reset' the surface because it will go back to win8....and from what i have seen, lot of people are still waiting to get win10 pushed to them by microsoft...and the 'hack' to install it manually hasnt worked for everyone either...luckily it had worked for me. When the surface is on and working, everything is perfect, no major glitches....but the fact it stays off for so long and turns off randomly is really irritating.

Any advice would be great.

Thx

Arka
 

hughlle

Super Moderator
Staff member
Not much I can say on this matter alas, other than that a long press to power on won't really do much. If the device is turned off then a single press of the button is all it needs. (It get's confusing as seemingly every tablet out there is different to the next with regard to the power button. Some are a click, some are a second, some require you to keep holding it blah blah)
 
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arka_319

New Member
Not much I can say on this matter alas, other than that a long press to power on won't really do much. If the device is turned off then a single press of the button is all it needs. (It get's confusing as seemingly every tablet out there is different to the next with regard to the power button. Some are a click, some are a second, some require you to keep holding it blah blah)

Yes i try the one click first, then sometimes when it doesnt work, i hold it down. For ex, i just did the one click now....it displayed the surface logo, then screen went black (instead of going to login screen)....BUT for the first time, since this has been happening, i just saw this below error....its still restarting...not sure if this will fix it, but this is first time ive seen this error.
 

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hughlle

Super Moderator
Staff member
All I know from my own experience with win 10 and the S3, is that it shouldn't be turning off like this. It may be the case that you have no choice but to try a reset and keep your fingers crossed.
 

stammie

Member
I can't help much other than to say my Surface 3 has (so far) been flawless since I upgraded to Windows 10, although mine is the 4GB RAM 128GB storage one.
Although in the week or so before I upgraded I experienced some strange power on hiccups but my device never turned itself off.
My Surface at random wouldn't power up properly, I'd get the Surface screen then it would appear to power down again, only holding the power button for an extended time would power it up and I got a brief flicker of "hibernation" on the screen before it started up.
My untrained brain would suggest a Windows update in the time leading up to 10's release may have triggered yours and mine faults and maybe a fresh install of 10 rather than an upgrade may clear what's happening on your Surface 3.
 
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arka_319

New Member
Update: the surface worked fine all day yesterday....then when i woke up this morning- SAME ISSUE. So something tells me, for whatever reason, EVERY night the surface turns off completely and i have to turn it on every morning....i have noticed this on consecutive 'mornings' now....and i have checked the power options in settings so many times....and nothing in there should be doing this. Something in the surface is making it turn off daily, at night specifically. Very strange and its really annoying. Thanks to all for the feedback so far.
 
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arka_319

New Member
I can't help much other than to say my Surface 3 has (so far) been flawless since I upgraded to Windows 10, although mine is the 4GB RAM 128GB storage one.
Although in the week or so before I upgraded I experienced some strange power on hiccups but my device never turned itself off.
My Surface at random wouldn't power up properly, I'd get the Surface screen then it would appear to power down again, only holding the power button for an extended time would power it up and I got a brief flicker of "hibernation" on the screen before it started up.
My untrained brain would suggest a Windows update in the time leading up to 10's release may have triggered yours and mine faults and maybe a fresh install of 10 rather than an upgrade may clear what's happening on your Surface 3.

Thanks stammie- how do i do a fresh install? the only thing i can think of doing is reset back to win 8 then 'upgrade' to win10, right?
 
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arka_319

New Member
I was able to solve this problem after doing some more research. It turns out...for some reason (maybe by default- to save battery power), my surface was always going into 'hibernate' mode at night; every night.

I didnt like this...so to fix this, i did the following, and as of this morning...when i tapped my surface...it brought me straight to the lock screen, whereas lately i was having to press the power button every morning to 'turn it on'. Hope this helps anyone else experiences this in the future.

If you want to disable hibernation and let the Surface be on Connected Standby all the time, you need to open up a Command Prompt with Admin Rights and type this:

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

Restart, and it won't hibernate any more.
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Update: the surface worked fine all day yesterday....then when i woke up this morning- SAME ISSUE. So something tells me, for whatever reason, EVERY night the surface turns off completely and i have to turn it on every morning....i have noticed this on consecutive 'mornings' now....and i have checked the power options in settings so many times....and nothing in there should be doing this. Something in the surface is making it turn off daily, at night specifically. Very strange and its really annoying. Thanks to all for the feedback so far.
Hmm, I'll assume its hibernating which for a Surface is "Normal" after 4 hours on Connected Standby. another user posted how to disable hibernation although battery life will suffer a little.

As for Refreshing or Resting going back to 8.1 etc. all are possible with caveats. By default after upgrading you have the Option to GO BACK to the previous OS for 30 days so long as you don't do anything that would prevent this option from working. IF you do a Refresh or Reset reinstall the Go Back feature is no longer (there are other ways to restore 7 or 8.1 though)
See my Thread on Recovery...

http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/upgrade-observations-and-post-upgrade-recovery-options.16366/

You can
REFRESH - Reinstalls Windows and keeps your files.
RESET - Reinstalls Windows WITHOUT keeping files.
Go Back to previous OS - The one you Upgraded from.
Return to Factory settings - Uses recovery partition to recover (WIN 8.1 on PRO 2 or 3 or S3, Win 8.0 on Pro)
 
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