My husband and I both have Surface computers, but his is a bit older than mine. This morning he was shutting down the computer and it all looked normal, screen black and such But, the speakers kept whirring a bit, then stopping, then whirring a bit again. This has been going on for over an hour, and the computer will not restart. Ideas?
Welcome.
Be aware that this forum is mainly for Framework laptops. You’d have better luck getting an answer on a forum for Surface computers.
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Looks like you ended up in the wrong forum by mistake. For Surface products, I’d check with their own community.
I clearly was upset when I typed my question, as I USED to have a Surface for many years before getting my Framework. Embarrassing, but true. SO, my question is a out my husband’s first generation Framework computer. That said, somehow the pisition of the lid had been such that it wasn’t quite open enough to respond to the start burron, so that issue resolved. But yhe whirring continued on and off most of the evening, even with checking for updates and shutting down totalyy then restarting. Now, with that clarification, anyone have any ideas?? Thanks
P.S. Excuse typos, please. I’m terrible typer on my phone screen.
This often happens with my 11th Gen Framework running Windows 10. I think the not sleeping and waking up have to do with Modern Standby. There’s a Windows command powercfg /sleepstudy that can show you how much sleep your computer is managing to get. Technology has gotten so complicated that even computers have insomnia now! 
I do sometimes have to hold the power button for the Framework to shut down. The screen will be black and the fan will be whirring, and it won’t shut down unless I hold the power button for a few seconds.
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Thank you SO much, Brian! Your comment was both informative and reassuring! I will pass it on to my husband. (Loved the comment about “even computers have insomnia now!”
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To expand a bit on why Windows does this, why it doesn’t just shut down normally and completely. It’s due to Window’s having a pretty bad update system. In order to make it slightly less bad, Windows has your computer not shut off normally and completely, instead doing “Modern Standby” so that Windows can do various things related to updates. So the fans may stay on, because it really is still on. Windows may also start up on its own at times. This can be a problem when you have your computer in a bag because without ventilation it can overheat.
Now, you can turn off “Modern Standby” but things arguably get worse if you do. Windows may refuse to turn on when you need it, instead saying it has to apply updates, and sitting there unusable for a long time. Coming from Linux, it just feels insane. Your computer just randomly not being available when you need it.
Thanks for that further information. Thankfully, all seems to be remedied, and the fan is back to being its usual self and the computer turns on and off as it should, too. I always make sure that my computer has checked for updates (which is generally has), but my husband had not known to check for updates, so might have had a backlog there, too! Anyway, thank you – most appreciated!
Interesting. I’ve always had the hunch that the worst sleep problems are somehow caused by Windows Update. If I really want the computer to sleep, I hibernate it.
Maybe a little off-topic, but in addition to the insomnia, Windows also seems to oversleep at times. I have a daily task scheduled for 6 am, and it often doesn’t trigger until I wake the machine up much later. Though, sometimes it works as intended, maybe because the computer happened to be awake at that time anyway.
And sometimes I’ll find that the 6 am task is half-complete because the computer fell asleep while performing it. This is despite various attempts I’ve made to prevent sleep through API calls or even changing the power config while my task is running. So add narcolepsy to the list of Modern Windows Problems
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One other thing I’ve noticed is that my Framework will shutdown nicely if I first unplug it from the power.
Also when the computer isn’t sleeping (and even telling it to sleep only gets it to turn the screen off), it seems happy to sleep when I unplug the power.