Laptop screen takes a minute to turn on after the Creators Update

With the Creators Update, Microsoft provided users with a lot of useful features, with a special emphasis on multimedia and creativity. The first reactions are mostly positive, but not all of the expectations were met. Portable PC’s are not exactly neglected but there’s always a room for improvements.

On the other hand, while we are waiting for those improvements, let’s take a look at drawbacks that laptop users reported after the update. One of the issues that heavily impacted overall use on daily basis is the vastly increased screen time-out.

Simply put, after the update, the screen on the laptop takes up to a minute to turn on. We’re not sure what inflicted that loading time, but there may be a solution or two available for this annoyance.

So, if you’ve experienced exact or similar issues on your laptop, make sure to check the list of the solutions below.

How to fix laptop screen pause in Windows 10 Creators Update

1. Check your hardware and GPU drivers

Even though this is most of the time software-related issue, it won’t harm you to check your screen. Maybe the unexpected pause is caused by malfunction of some kind. Connect your laptop to an external monitor and compare the behavior with the default monitor. Additionally, you should inspect these two things, before we move on to advanced troubleshooting.

First is related to a refresh rate and this is how to check it out:

1. Right-click on the Desktop and open Screen Resolution.
2. Click on the Advanced Settings.
3. Under Monitor tab, set the Screen refresh rate to 60 Hertz.
4. Click OK to confirm the selection.

Another thing you should check are the GPU drivers. If you’re running dual-GPU, check both of those and update them appropriately.

2. Check the Power Settings

Now, let’s check the Power settings. In some cases, the update may have changed some of the vital settings and that can affect the screen behavior. This is how to restore your default Power settings and resolve any power-related effects on the screen time-out.

1. Right-click Battery icon in the Notification area and open Power Options.
2. Click Change plan settings beside your preferred/active Power plan.
3. Open Change Advanced power settings.
4. Click on Restore plan defaults and confirm the selection.

Now, you can as well tweak some settings if you like, but we can only advise you to eventually disable the screen turning off. Yes, that’s not exactly the solution for this problem, but it can serve as the temporary workaround.

3. Disable Fast Startup

The Fast Startup feature is a good feature but occasionally it won’t work as intended. Basically, when enabled, Fast Startup increase substantially startup speed. It kind of resembles the hibernation mode. However, it may as well affect your laptop behavior and inflict some uncalled problems. For that purpose, we advise you to try and disable it and look for changes. And this is how you can do that:

1. Right-click Battery icon in the Notification area and open Power Options.
2. Click  ”Choose what the power buttons do”.
3. Select ”Change settings that are currently unavailable”.
4. Under Shutdown settings, uncheck Turn on fast startup.
5. Click Save to confirm changes.

4. Run SFC

Besides the Power settings, the latest update can corrupt some of the system files and slow down the processes that were quite speedy. Like your startup, programs responsiveness and, between the rest, the screen time-out. Because of that, we advise you to use the System File Checker to check & repair the essential system files and possibly resolve the issue. This is how to use the SFC tool:

1. Right-click the Start menu and open Command Prompt (Admin).
2. Under command line, type the following command and press Enter:
   • sfc/scannow
3. After the process is finished, restart your PC and check for changes in the screen time-out.

5. Update BIOS

A lot of the users denounced the outdated BIOS as the main culprit for the screen issues. For some reason, the Creators Update asks for updated motherboard in order to work seamlessly. So, you should certainly take some time researching and take the BIOS flashing into consideration. Now, there are two ways to flash your motherboard and update the BIOS:

• Newer configurations offer direct upgrade trough BIOS settings.
• Older configurations need a special system tool to run BIOS upgrade.

As you can see, the procedure is heavily dependent on your system configuration, and you need to look closer into that before the BIOS upgrade is performed. For further pieces of information, go to your OEM’s website. In addition, these are some risky doings, so make sure not to power off your PC until the process is finished. The damage can be substantial.

6. Reset Windows 10

Before Windows 10 users had only two recovery options: System Restore and complete wipeout, that is reinstallation. But with Windows 10, we got more than few additional options when it comes to the troubleshooting of the critical errors.

Some of them are more similar to a System Restore, others, well, more related to a re-installation. The one will be using to address today is the ”Reset this PC” feature. And this is how to use it and repair your PC:

1. Press Windows key + I to bring out Settings app.
2. Click on Update & security.
3. From the left pane, choose Recovery.
4. Under ”Reset this PC”, click on Get started.
5. Select Keep my files. We don’t want our sensitive data gone.
6. Click Next and then click Reset.
7. After reset, the PC will restart.
8. Choose ”Continue” to boot into Windows 10.

However, if this procedure failed to resolve your problems, don’t worry, it’s time for the big guns to come into play. Yes, we’re talking about the clean reinstallation.

7. Perform a clean reinstall

At the end, if all of the previous steps were conducted to little or no avail, you can turn to a ”system from scratch” approach. It never was so easy to reinstall your system as it’s now with Windows 10. Furthermore, if you’re not accustomed to the procedure at hand, follow closely the instructions presented in this article.

That should be enough to get you started. If the problem is persistent, we advise you to get your laptop to service for the more thorough inspection.

In addition, don’t forget to share your experience with this problem in the comment section. We’ll appreciate it.

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