Surface Pro 4 Won’t Shut down Troubleshooting Solution

Surface Pro 4 is one of the most complex and ambitious operating systems that Microsoft ever released. Of course, with complexity comes a wide range of bugs that could use some tweaks and improvements. While that doesn’t make this OS less worthy, it can still be very annoying when Surface Pro 4 won’t shut down completely and properly, for instance.

These malfunctions reported by its users come from the complexity of the operating system. In today’s article, we’re going to discuss and help you troubleshoot this particular problem. As expected, a computer won’t shut down properly for various causes:

Some third-party programs could still be running;
Some process threads might run in the background;
The RAM might take extra time for dumping the memory etc.

By now, you’re probably already missing the old Windows 7. That operating system used to be so simple and fast that chances are we’ll never going to get something similar. So if you still appreciate all the extra features that Surface Pro 4 has been offering you, don’t give up on it.

Instead, read this guide on how to fix Surface Pro 4 won’t shut down completely and properly. Have you noticed that when you click on the shutdown option, from the start menu, the screen goes blank but the hard disk keeps moving and LEDs don’t go off? If you’re forced to shut down your computer from the physical power button more and more often, use one of the following solutions to fix the Windows not shutting down problem.

How to shut down completely and properly from the Power settings

One of the best ways to solve the Surface Pro 4 wont shut down problem is to deactivate the Fast Startup feature. This option is involved in the turn on and the turn off processes. Microsoft thought it’ll come as a great feature. The problem is, however, that not all computers support it. And when you are running the Fast Startup feature on a machine that cannot handle it, you could have all sorts of problems. That’s because many processes and also the BIOS are referred to this feature, in an attempt of serializing all the processes with every system initialization or shutdown.

If you want your PC to turn off smoothly and quickly, the first thing you should do is to turn off the Fast Startup in Surface Pro 4:

Go to the Settings section by typing its name in the search bar and clicking on the indicated icon;
Identify the System section and from there, go to the Power & Sleep menu;
Access the Additional Power Settings and from there, select the desired actions for each power button;
After that, identify the option that says “Change settings that are currently unavailable”;
In the drop-down list of options, scroll down until you reach the section called “Shutdown settings”;
From all the options with checked boxes listed in there, make sure that the one labeled as “Turn on Fast Startup” is unchecked;
Close everything and restart your computer for the changes to take place.

This option you just deactivated was supposed to fasten the startup process. But it was also the reason why the shutdown process was taking so long. From now on, the Surface Pro 4 won’t shutdown shouldn’t happen anymore.

How to shut down completely and properly from the Device Manager

Alternatively, you can look for a solution in the Device Manager. To access it, just go to the start button, right-click on it, and select the option with the same name:

Go to System Devices;
Select the “Intel Management Engine Interface” driver, which is the driver responsible for the shutdown of the operating system;
Go to the “Driver” tab;
Search for the updated driver from the web or from your PC;
- If you find an update install it;
- If you don’t find any update, do the roll back driver.

After that, you should see the operating system shutting down as it is supposed to.