SP3 waking in the night and freezing

[Michael Lovett]

Each night, since installing windows 10, my SP3 has been waking up in the night, then freezing at the "Surface" screen; this is while docked.

In fairness I also had a similar problem occasionally with 8.1; in the morning when I wanted to use the PC and I pressed the power button, while docked, it would not always come out of hibernation..with the same symptom...stuck at the Surface screen.

My remedy in both cases is to take it out of the dock, force a restart, then put back into the dock.

My guess is that the loading of some driver, while docked, is the culprit, but I don't know of a good way to verify this.

Anyone else with similar problems and/or solutions??

MICHAEL

 

[provoshane]

I have the exact same problem. Also, typing URL's is also very slow.

 

[colintemp]

I have the same problem. I usually work with my SP3 in the docking station and put it to sleep. The next morning it won't start up again, and worse still, the fan is running very loudly. I have to hold down the power button for a while (15 seconds or so) and then the fan stops. I wait a few more seconds then press the power button and it boots up.

This NEVER happened when I was on 8.1.

I'm no expert, but I thought I would take a look at the Event Viewer. What's disturbing is that the SP3 seems to have been running so hot that on reboot the CPU is being throttled. (Log says speed of processor is being limited by system firmware.)

Unfortunately I can't see from the logs (no expert, as I said) when the system woke from sleep and what it tried to do.

I'm really worried that this is shortening the life of my SP3 and I'm looking at how I can go back to 8.1. Win 10 is OK, but nothing compelling (and don't get me started on OneDrive - which is now basically TwoDrives).

 

[GreyFox7]

Id try uninstalling the Wireless Driver in Device Manager, it should automatically reinstall or do a scan for changes if it doesn't. there may be something else doing it but that is a frequent problem.

 

[colintemp]

Thanks, GreyFox7!

Reinstalling the wireless driver seems to have fixed the problem. I read somewhere that this wireless driver issue might be caused by having VPN software installed before the Windows 10 upgrade. Apparently one symptom of this is also that the Ethernet (wired) connection no longer works, which I also experience recently.

What I did was uninstall the VPN software, as well as BitDefender, which was somehow flagging the VPN program as a virus (never happened under Win 8.1) and the wireless driver. After rebooting, wireless is working, Ethernet is working and this morning the SP3 started normally. It was also not hot at all when I touched it, unlike on previous mornings, and the fan was completely silent, so presumably not spinning.

For now I'll stick with Windows Defender and forego the VPN, which I don't need too often.

 

[GreyFox7]

VPN and 3rd Party Antivirus software are frequent sources of trouble as well especially in the early days of a new release. Mix in a flakey wireless driver and you have the perfect recipe for Trouble Stew with a capital "T". Glad you got it sorted.