Surface Pro 3 Power Management Sticky

[jnjroach]

This is a Sticky Thread to consolidate the Power Management info on the Surface Pro 3


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Traditional Sleep is the S3 Power State, it stores everything in RAM and is maintained via the battery or mains but a loss in power (through failure or drain) will mean loss of data.

Connected Standby in the x86/x64 Architecture is S0iX it is an ultra-low power "ON" State and replaces the S3 Power State. On all Connected Standby enabled Machines (with the exception of the Surface Pro 3) the only Power States Available are:

S0 - On
S0iX - Connected Standby (now known as InstantGo)
S5 - Off

The Surface Pro 3 uses an additional EEPROM to manage Power and Thermals that runs at a lower level than the OS, this adjusts the Power States the SP3 uses:

S0 - On
S0ix - Connected Standby
S4 Modified - Lite Hibernation
S4 - Traditional Hibernation
S5 - Off

On battery it will cycle through the above, on mains it will only use S0 and S0ix

0-4 Hours - Connected Standby
4-12 Hours - Lite Hibernation
12+ - Traditional Hibernation (It can maintain remaining levels for over a year in this state)

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Connected Standby is very different from traditional Sleep (ACPI S3) and Hibernate (ACPI S4) states.

Sleep and Hibernate completely pause all activity on the system when the processors are turned off. Activity remains paused until the user turns the system back on by pressing the power button, keyboard or touchpad. Connected Standby automatically pauses and resumes activity on the system while the screen is off to maintain connectivity and sync content from the cloud. The amount of activity is tightly controlled to help ensure low power and long battery life. However, the amount of activity varies for each Connected Standby as app activity changes with available networking or incoming data.

Sleep and Hibernate states do not maintain connectivity on the network (Wi-Fi, LAN or cellular). In Sleep and Hibernate modes, the networking devices are turned off until the user powers the system back on. Connected Standby keeps the networking devices powered on, but in an extremely low-power mode to maintain connectivity. The Wi-Fi device is able to automatically roam between networks preferred by the user and alert Windows to important network traffic.

Sleep and Hibernate states completely pause all app, service, and driver activity when the processors are powered off. Connected Standby allows apps, services, and drivers to keep running, but in a tightly controlled manner to save power and extend battery life. Windows Store apps get a few seconds every 15 minutes to run background tasks, but desktop applications are paused for the duration of Connected Standby. Allowing apps to run in a controlled manner is how email sync and tile updates are performed during Connected Standby.

The traditional Sleep (ACPI S3) state consumes 500 milliwatts or more of average power consumption to maintain memory in self-refresh and allow the platform to wake on user input. This gives the typical mobile system with a 45-watt-hour battery just under 100 hours of Sleep time on a full charge. However, Connected Standby systems use low-power memory and power-optimized embedded controllers to consume less than 150 milliwatts in most configurations. This allows the typical platform to remain in Sleep for 300 hours on a full battery charge—3 times longer than the traditional Sleep state.

Connected Standby has longer battery life than Sleep and also maintains connectivity. This allows the user to no longer worry about the battery life tradeoff between Sleep and Hibernate, nor worry about the differences in resume performance. A user of a Connected Standby PC can just shut the lid or press the power button and be assured the system will enter a low-power mode and maintain connectivity—just like a smartphone.



http://download.microsoft.com/downl...4C9FDB/introduction-to-connected-standby.docx

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Connected Standby Troubleshooting:

From an elevated CMD Prompt:

powercfg /sleepstudy

powercfg /battery

powercfg /energy

By default all of these command will create an HTML report in the Windows\System32 directory and to read the report requires you to copy them to your profile or you can add the path to your profile in the Command.

The Sleep Study will report on each Connected Standby Session showing battery drain and which processes are consuming or preventing successful Connected Standby Sessions.

The Battery Report will show your battery performance

The Energy Report is a more general report for overall battery usage and consumption, useful in narrowing down likely culprits impacting battery life.

 

[ptrkhh]

Add /output <directory>\battery_report.html to get the report to other directory:

for example, these scripts will put the battery report and sleep study to the desktop:

powercfg /batteryreport /output %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\battery_report.html

powercfg /sleepstudy /output %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\sleepstudy_report.html

EDIT: You need to run the sleepstudy in an elevated command prompt. That means, you need to run command prompt as an administrator to get the sleepstudy report. Battery report works fine with standard privilege.

 

[ptrkhh]

Tip:

Disabling hibernation (easy)

Why?
The transition from S0ix to S4 'modified' and from S4 'modified' to the traditional S4 make a room for programs to misbehave. Badly coded desktop apps that are still in the taskbar, or system tray, or the combination between the two, could halt the whole transition, leaving the machine draining the battery. Since these transitions are unique to the SP3, no desktop app is guaranteed to be able to go through the transition without issues.

But more important than all of that, with hibernation we only get 4 hours of Connected Standby (S0ix). That means, alarms may not ring, notifications may not appear, the tiles may not be fresh, waking up the machine may not be instant. After four hours, it doesn't feel like a tablet anymore, it now feels more like a traditional laptop computer. There is no reassuring feel that the machine will meet you with fresh data. At this point, you could even question the usability of such short Connected Standby in the first place.

Then?
The solution is simple, just disable hibernation. It will behave like a Surface RT, or iPad, or just any other tablet. It will go to Connected Standby (S0ix) sleep state forever, refreshing data, ringing alarms, alive. Well, the question now has to be:

Will it drain my battery?
According to my sleepstudy report, the battery drain is about 0.55% per hour. That means, it consumes less than 5% over an 8 hours period, a normal human sleep cycle. You could get less than that since I have all the lockscreen notification slots fulfilled, as well as 2 active email accounts and a truckload of tiles.

What if Im going to leave the device for a long time?
Just shut it down. If youre going to leave the machine for days or longer, most probably you don't really need to have all the apps stay opened anyway. And remember, smartphones and other tablets aren't any different, they don't survive a week of standby either.

Okay, Im convinced. How do I disable hibernation?
Don't worry, its easy. It takes no more than ten seconds:

Open an elevated cmd, and type
powercfg -h off
Enter and done.


(you also get 4-8 GB more space in your C: drive!)

 

[bells0]

Silly question, does it show any confirmation if it works? New to all this..........

 

[jnjroach]

Silly question, does it show any confirmation if it works? New to all this..........

If you are asking about Hibernation Off, then no confirmation if successful, it will show an error if it can't accomplish the task and the only reason that would happen is insufficient privilege (i.e. not opening an elevated (running as Administrator) CMD Prompt).

 

[ptrkhh]

Silly question, does it show any confirmation if it works? New to all this..........

If you are asking about Hibernation Off, then no confirmation if successful, it will show an error if it can't accomplish the task and the only reason that would happen is insufficient privilege (i.e. not opening an elevated (running as Administrator) CMD Prompt).

Try powercfg -a command


If hibernation is enabled, it should show the following:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg -a

The following sleep states are available on this system:

  Standby (Connected)

  Hibernate

  Fast Startup




The following sleep states are not available on this system:

  Standby (S1)

  The system firmware does not support this standby state.

  This standby state is disabled when connected standby is supported.




  Standby (S2)

  The system firmware does not support this standby state.

  This standby state is disabled when connected standby is supported.




  Standby (S3)

  The system firmware does not support this standby state.

  This standby state is disabled when connected standby is supported.




  Hybrid Sleep

  Standby (S3) is not available.

Hibernation disabled:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg -a

The following sleep states are available on this system:

  Standby (Connected)




The following sleep states are not available on this system:

  Standby (S1)

  The system firmware does not support this standby state.

  This standby state is disabled when connected standby is supported.




  Standby (S2)

  The system firmware does not support this standby state.

  This standby state is disabled when connected standby is supported.




  Standby (S3)

  The system firmware does not support this standby state.

  This standby state is disabled when connected standby is supported.




  Hibernate

  Hibernation has not been enabled.




  Hybrid Sleep

  Standby (S3) is not available.

  Hibernation is not available.




  Fast Startup

  Hibernation is not available.

 

[bells0]

Didn't work then! Maybe i'm not getting the enhanced prompt cmd screen.

Go to search > cmd, right click and select 'run as administrator' - is this how i get the cmd screen?

 

[ptrkhh]

Go to search > cmd, right click and select 'run as administrator' - is this how i get the cmd screen?

yeah, that should work. To confirm, enter shutdown.exe -r. If the computer restarts, then you have admin privilege in that cmd window.

Try restarting the SP3. There might be pending configuration or something, I'm not sure though. Use that shutdown.exe command, to kill two birds with one stone...

 

[bells0]

Doesn't look like it worked then! - doh!

 

[Umut]

Hello,
Why should I prefer connected standby over default sleep mode of surface pro 3 ?
As I read it provides connectivity support, but I don't need connectivitiy I just need the lowest power consumption and fast wake up.
Without connectivity support, it should last longer with sleep mode by my logic. It would be great for background network activities such as download softwares though.
Current sleep mode allows me to sleep/wake up in less than a second. I have also tried hibernation mode but it takes 5-6 sec to wake up, which
is about the same time to turn on a completely turned off device, so i would turn off the device instead.
Is there a way to make hibernation mode work faster ?
I just want the lowest power consumption while I take notes on university classes. My device should last 8-9 hours sometimes.
I turn the airplane mode on to disable battery drain of wifi. I also set max processor state to 40% for my school/note taking battery plan, screen brightness is 30% and all other advanced power plan settings are in favor of battery life.
I leave my device in sleep mode in case I need to take notes quickly(so i need quick wake up) while not leaving it completely turned on and drain the battery life.
What I also need is a new power cover accessory or an external battery made for surface pro 3/4 for long days...
Thanks for all the info.

 

[stustaff]

Any help on what the below is saying?

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg -a
The following sleep states are available on this system:
Standby (S0 Low Power Idle) Network Connected

The following sleep states are not available on this system:
Standby (S1)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.
This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

Standby (S2)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.
This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

Standby (S3)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.
This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

Hibernate
Hibernation has not been enabled.

Hybrid Sleep
Standby (S3) is not available.
Hibernation is not available.

Fast Startup
Hibernation is not available.

 

[jnjroach]

Any help on what the below is saying?

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg -a
The following sleep states are available on this system:
Standby (S0 Low Power Idle) Network Connected

The following sleep states are not available on this system:
Standby (S1)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.
This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

Standby (S2)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.
This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

Standby (S3)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.
This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

Hibernate
Hibernation has not been enabled.

Hybrid Sleep
Standby (S3) is not available.
Hibernation is not available.

Fast Startup
Hibernation is not available.

It means S0iX is the only Sleep State available on you SP3....