Cannot get the display back when display turns off after inactivity - Windows 10 issue?

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peppergomez

2[H]4U
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Sep 15, 2011
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I have my display set to turn off after 20 minutes when my laptop is plugged in. The problem is that once it turns off, no matter of mouse clicking or key pushing will wake it up again. I have to do a hard reboot, which is a PITA/

Can anyone assist with any Windows settings tweaks that may solve this?

Thanks.
 
Edit Power Plan
Change advanced power settings

Take a look at all your power settings.
 
Yeah I did that, following a link about how to solve this issue, but it hasn't worked thus far
 
Windows seems to mess up my display sleeping with various patches.

Some patches it won't go to sleep, I have had it where it won't wake up like you post.

It's very annoying. As of late it's doing alright.

The power plan settings are good spots to start. Can also try plugging in an external monitor to see if that gets detected.

May help to see if you can RDP or VNC in while it's blanked and see if it lets you in.
 
Since how long you are facing this problem, Why dont you try to delete the hibernation file

Click Start.
  1. Type command. ...
  2. Right-click Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator.
  3. Click Yes if a User Account Control window appears requesting permission to continue. ...
  4. Type powercfg.exe /hibernate off into the Command Prompt window and press Enter.
  5. Close the Command Prompt window.
 
Hey Steve,

Since I bought the laptop from an [H] member early this summer, like late June or July.

I will try that. Thanks.
 
It might be similar to what this HP All in one I recently got was doing. It had Windows 8 on it and I upgraded it to Windows 10 and when the PC sleeps and I wake it up, the backlight doesn't turn back on so you just see a really dim image.
Restarting the machine turns the backlight back on.

The fix I found was a BIOS update, put the latest BIOS on the machine and all is good. Maybe a BIOS update may fix your issue.
 
OK thanks I will investigate that possbility. It's an Alienware M15

Specifications: 15" 144hz IPS LCD
i7-8750H
32GB (2x 16GB Ram)
RTX 2070
2x 1TB Toshiba XG5 NVME SSD
90WHr Battery
Windows 10 Home
240W Adapter
 
Ugh this is driving me crazy. It's gotten worse it seems. Specifically, the screen will not 'wake up' after it turns off. There is no way other than rebooting to get it to do so. I am having to set the screen behavior to Never turn off, which I don't want to do.
I have followed advice I've read online, and have run the Alienware update app to make sure my system is current.

Not sure what else to do.

I have 2 monitors plugged in externally, so I tested by unplugging them to see if the laptop screen would resume after turning off due to inactivity. It didn't.

I am running Windows 10 and it is up to date.
 
I had a similar issue, but rather than reset the PC, I just power down the monitor and turn it back on and it usually comes back.

My issue was weird, I have mine to never shut off, but still for some reason sometimes it powers down the monitor at around 2am sometimes. I can't find anywhere where it is set to power down the monitor, but just sometimes at around 2am it just does it. Though it hasn't happened to me in several months.
 
Yeah I tried powering down the external monitors, which didn't work, and then unplugging them, thinking they might have been interfering with the monitor waking back up. That didn't work. There's no way to turn on a laptop display.
 
Well with the external monitors, did you plug them back in and turn them on after the main screen went off? If you only disconnected them I don't think that's enough, you want windows to think new hardware was connected (specifically to the video card). IIRC, when I powered my monitor off it gave me that disconnect sound win 10 plays, and it played the reconnect sound when I powered it up again before the screen came back on. Also what version of Nvidia's drivers are you running? IIRC the one I was running the last time I had the issue was 419.35.
 
I had this issue with a monitor on a 3 monitor setup on an AMD 2200g setup (my wife's) .. I changed out the offending monitor (replaced with a larger monitor) and the problem automagically went away.... o_O
 
ThreeDee said:
I had this issue with a monitor on a 3 monitor setup on an AMD 2200g setup (my wife's) .. I changed out the offending monitor (replaced with a larger monitor) and the problem automagically went away.... o_O
Click to expand...
Yep the OP should definitely change the monitor in his laptop to a bigger one. 15" is tiny :D
 
B00nie said:
Yep the OP should definitely change the monitor in his laptop to a bigger one. 15" is tiny :D
Click to expand...
thats what I would do .. ! Isn't that what duct tape is for? :sneaky:

..or try different nvidia gpu drivers? .. delete intel gpu drivers and let windows reinstall it.. or check bios for "allow usb to wake up computer" setting and enable it? ..or update power management drivers? ...did you update the bios? ... close lid and open.. hit F4 to change to external monitor .. throw it against the wall? :cigar:
 
Is the laptop in a dock / docking station? Separately, are the displays connected via displayport?

I've noticed more issues with displayport in Windows 10 than any other form of connection.

Had some ThinkPads at work that were having problems where monitors connected via DP would not immediately wake up (but would about 5-10 minutes later on their own after trying to get them to wake). Fixed it by updating docking station firmware and GPU drivers (and using drivers from GPU company, not from manufacturer of PC). Oddly enough, the issue ALSO would go away if we simply avoided displayport by using an adapter

Of course, now I have a side-effect after all that. One of my monitors (Dell P2217 I think) now, when the PC is in "displays off" mode constantly turns itself on and off and shows a "no signal" block on the screen until I wake everything back up. But it does wake up reliably now. Haven't figured that one out...
 
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My problem fits in the same category.

Windows 7, dp cable to monitor (hp pc, hp cable, hp monitor)
Replace the machine, same model, with another running windows 10, flickering, cutting out, display fuzziness.
Swap to a Dp to dvi adapter and dvi cable..aok

Actually have a case open with an hp engineer on it
 
I am facing same issue with my TV (monitor). I am using Samsung 4k TV as monitor and atleast 1 time in a day I just cant wake display if it went to sleep OR sometimes even while starting up the PC.
What I do is pull the power plug of TV and put it back again and it works. Try doing that .
 
Our office HP laptops do the same thing. I dunno who to blame at this point.
 
Still no solution for my side-effect either. This Dell monitor hooked via displayport is really bugging me. Although my wake issue is fixed, the side-effect is my dell monitor, when the PC is in "displays off" mode constantly blinks on and off its "no signal" OSD for the displayport... repeatedly, 24/7 until I wake it

Would really like to find a solution that works while keeping DP-to-DP cable.. it's a small issue but I get determined with trying to fix these kind of things. This type of side-effect shouldn't exist. So far my experience with DisplayPort is that it's an inferior protocol/format plagued with issues, especially in Windows 10.
 
Update concerning my "no signal" blinking issue (can be considered a "constantly scanning for signal" issue, I suppose)

I think I can safely say this side-effect is present with certain monitor lines from Dell, particularly the P series and possibly some of the U series.
It's very under-reported online. I have found a few threads here and there, but none with a solution, most of them just fizzle out. I found a single thread that listed a solution, to "disable sleep in the monitor's OSD settings". Apparently some monitors from Dell have their own sleep management internally, in addition to the management received from the OS. Disabling the monitor's management and leaving it in the OS' hands may fix it for models that have this option.

However, the problem is none of the monitors at our workplace that are having this issue have this option in the OSD, period.

My P2217H has this problem. Most of our monitors out in the field are P22xx, P24xx, or U24xx. I believe there is an issue with particular Dell monitors' management of sleep and/or displayport signal detection
 
We have this issue at work on various DELL models. It is pretty much only on systems utilizing Display Ports. If we use VGA (various monitor models even) it is typically a non-issue. I fixed an Optiplex 5050 by adding a video card that had dual VGA. Not had a single issue since. We have even tried DP to VGA adapters with mixed results. I have a box I work off of that is a Lenovo with two DP and one VGA port in a triple monitor setup. The one DP has a DP to VGA adapter. Out of the three, the only one that does not always come back is the straight Display Port cable. The one on the adapter converting to VGA works every time. VGA works every time. And the other oddity is that even though my monitors are set to never turn off, when locking the screen it will still turn the monitors off within a minute or two. That is when the straight DP cable attached monitor sometimes doesn't come back on. Luckily in this scenario, unplugging the monitor and plugging it back in "wakes" it up.
 
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Realizing now that OP said even his built-in laptop screen is doing this. :bored: Now that is strange. OP- do you use a docking station? The only time I've ever seen a laptop not wake its own self/display up is when docked- at least on Lenovo models, because they require you to use the dock's power button to wake the machine. I doubt this is a solution or relevant in your case- but maybe still worth mentioning.

Though from just a bit of searching online, there are a number of other people with various Alienware models reporting similar problems, so I'm not sure if this may be a Dell issue overall. It's for sure a serious problem with their external monitors, but maybe they've made the same mistakes with internal ones too.

Would be curious if a solution was ever found. One person mentioned that "plugging in an HDMI cable and unplugging it" woke up the laptop screen, but that's a hacky workaround, not really a solution.
 
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