Touch Screen wakes Surface Pro 3 while screen is off

[TomTomRevolution]

Hello, I have had some trouble with my Surface Pro 3's touch screen. The touch screen works fine usually, but whenever the device is in sleep mode, touching the screen wakes the device. This means the device can't be used in tablet mode, because the screen wakes up if any skin grazes it. Do you have any advice on how to resolve the issue? Thank you in advance!

 

[Ian]

Welcome to the forums .

Would you be happy having only the power button being used to wake up the system? If so, you could stop the touchscreen from waking the device entirely.

You could try going to Device Manager and finding the touchscreen input device, view it's properties and click the "Power Management" tab. From here there should be a checkbox that you can clear, preventing it from being allowed to wake the computer.

Here's an example screenshot from my mouse (as my PC doesn't have a touchscreen):

 

[TomTomRevolution]

Thank you for your reply!
I went into the Device Manager and found the touch screen properties, but there wasn't the Power Management tab. I went through each of the other devices' properties and through the rest of the Device Manager, but could not find anything giving me control over how the touch screen can be deactivated for waking the device.

Attached are some pictures of where I found HID-compliant touch screen.

 

[Saltgrass]

Are you sure the system is sleeping when this happens? Does the Surface Pro 3 do Modern/Connected Standby?

You do have a cover you can put over the screen when not using?

Maybe look at the USB section is Device Manager to see if any Power Management tabs are there.

I wish my 2-in-1 system would activate the display with the touchscreen.

 

[Ian]

Ah that's a shame that there's no power management tab, as that could have been an easy fix.

@Saltgrass raises a really good point - is the tablet really "sleeping", rather than just having the display off? It could just be the display is set to turn off after inactivity, but it's not actually sleeping. If you manually put it to sleep via the start button > power > sleep, does it still wake from touching the screen?

 

[TomTomRevolution]

When playing around with the power settings, I can see that the power button is set to Turn Off the Display. The only other options I can set it to are Do Nothing, Shut Down, and Hibernate. When clicking the start button and clicking power, the only options available are Shut Down and Restart.

I believe the screen is turning on whenever touched because it's not actually in sleep, rather the display is just turned off, however I can't figure out how to change the power button's function to put the device to sleep. Any suggestions? Thank you guys again!

 

[Comp Cmndo]

Control Panel-->Power Options-->Choose What the Power Buttons Do
Change settings that are currently unavailable

 

[Saltgrass]

One way to check what is happening is play music. If you play iTunes, it will pause when the screen turns off. If you play Grove music, it will not pause. Putting the system in modern standby uses less power than just turning off the display but you still get the instant on and other things can be done, much like a phone does when notices pop up ..

You might go on the Microsoft community and ask some other Surface users of their systems do the same thing. But a modern standby system is not configured to sleep. To verify, open an admin command prompt and type

powercfg /a

It will tell you what is and is not allowed.

 

[TomTomRevolution]

One way to check what is happening is play music. If you play iTunes, it will pause when the screen turns off. If you play Grove music, it will not pause. Putting the system in modern standby uses less power than just turning off the display but you still get the instant on and other things can be done, much like a phone does when notices pop up ..

You might go on the Microsoft community and ask some other Surface users of their systems do the same thing. But a modern standby system is not configured to sleep. To verify, open an admin command prompt and type

powercfg /a

It will tell you what is and is not allowed.

So the display is just turning off and not going into sleep mode. I tested this with YouTube, and audio played when I clicked the power button and turned off the display.

Apparently Surfaces' have a designated Sleep mode called InstantGo. I tried resetting my power options by clicking Restore Default Settings for this Plan, but all it seems to have done is change the power button to now put the device in Hibernate as opposed to Surface's InstantGo sleep mode, like how it originally did.

 

[Comp Cmndo]

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13770/windows-shut-down-sleep-hibernate-your-pc