Surface Pro – Sleep oddities

No, this isn’t a post about me sleeping with my Surface Pro! My wife probably wouldn’t like that too much.

No this is a post about problems I seem to be having with this thing going to sleep. So, as a desktop replacement, it’s been pretty good so far. I’m still looking for a good way to split off the mini Display Port to two DVI monitors… I’m a dual 24″ monitor type of worker when I’m in the office. Using one and the Surface screen for work is not the best arrangement for me. But with that aside, I’ve been very happy so far.

I have noticed though that at times, when I go away from my desk, after hitting Windows Key + L to lock my screen, if I’m gone for more than just a minute or two, the SP seems to go into a deep sleep almost like hibernate mode – even when plugged into wall power. I’m a DBA, and I use SSMS all day long to interact with my SQL Servers… I try not to RDP to them to do work, unless I have OS level work to do. So, I might need to kick off a backup on a large DB that might take 30 minutes or longer to finish. I launch SSMS and run my TSQL command, all good. However, during the duration, if I lock my SP and then go to the rest room, and come back, I log back in, and my wireless connection is dropped… ergo, my backup has failed and I have to kick it off again.

It seems to me that perhaps there’s a proximity sensor on this thing, kind of like the XBOX Kinect camera that knows not only that I’ve locked my SP, but also that I’ve walked away, and it decides to override my power configuration and take a nap. That’s not a good thing… if I wanted to have to use a VDI type interface for all my work, I’d work off my Android phone with a Blue Tooth Keyboard, Mouse, and Micro HDMI to my monitor. If I can’t keep this thing running while on house power while I lock it, and go to a 30 minute meeting, it’s not useful as a workstation replacement. Off house power, I get it… but on it, let me decide – I am still a user, right Redmond?

2 thoughts on “Surface Pro – Sleep oddities

    • I have read somewhere that disabling the Display Brightness Adjustment stops this… however I have not had time to test this. I will note that my Surface is on our Corp domain, my co-worker’s is not and he has not experienced the issue that I have.

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