Have you connected your Windows 10/11 laptop to an external monitor? Does not your Dell external monitor wake up from sleep after you wake up the laptop? In this guide, we will tell you how to fix this problem quickly.
If you have connected your Windows 11/10 laptop to a Dell external monitor and the monitor refuses to wake up from sleep when you wake up the laptop, you might think that the issue is with Windows 10/11 or its drivers. Even I had thought the same. But it might have nothing to do with Windows operating system.
My laptop running Windows 11 would go to sleep after five minutes of inactivity. The laptop would wake up from sleep whenever I touched the trackpad or pressed a key. However, the external Dell monitor (Dell P2415Q, if it helps), which I connected to my laptop, always refused to wake up from sleep.
I had to manually power off and on the screen to wake it from sleep. My old HP external monitor did not have this issue when connected to the same laptop.
Reset Dell monitor’s energy settings
Although this solution applies to Dell monitors, you can try this solution on monitors from other brands as well.
Step 1: Use the physical buttons of the Dell monitor to open the menu.
Step 2: Switch to the Energy tab. Select the Reset Energy Settings option and then press the OK button on your monitor to reset the energy settings. The screen might go blank for a second during the reset process.
That’s it! From on, the Dell monitor should wake up from sleep without any issues.
Disable Dell monitor’s deep sleep mode
While researching online, again on the Dell support forum, it came to our knowledge that some Dell monitors come with a deep sleep mode which prevents the monitor from waking up from sleep. All you need to do is turn off the deep sleep mode.
According to the Dell support page, the deep sleep feature makes sure that the monitor does not use more than 0.5 W while in sleep mode. If you turn it off, it might use more than 0.5 W. Since my Dell monitor does not have this option, I have taken the picture from the Dell support page.
The deep sleep mode can be found in the Others tab on your Dell monitor.
Lynn Stott says
Dell is a bunch of juck! I will NEVER touch another Dell product… nothing but issues like this.
Mark says
Hey! I have this exact same issue with my Dell P2415Q.
I use a MacBook Air with Thunderbolt (USB-C) to HDMI and thought it could be the Mac or adaptors interfering with the monitor.
I found cycling the monitors power from the wall fixes the issue, but this happens many times a day and quite frankly I’m getting sick of bending down under my desk to do so.
I’ve reset the energy settings so hoping that does the trick!
Dee says
I’m having this issue also. I’m guessing throwing it might bring it out of sleep.
Phillip North says
Hiya – thanks for the post here. I have scoured the web and found a multitude of people experiencing the same issues with Dell monitors not coming out of sleep.
I have four U2723QE (2022 models) which do not have this ‘deep sleep’ option in their firmware. I am using a Mac (not that this impacts monitor firmware) and experience a locked / hung monitor multiple times a day. When the monitor is locked in sleep mode the only solution is to unplug from power. Unplugging USB-C / Thunderbolt and re-plugging does not work. Plugging in another computer (to same or alternate port like HDMI or DP) doesn’t work. Plugging in a Windows machine where Mac was doesn’t work either.
I think there is a bigger issue here with Dell monitors going to sleep and not coming back that they are not admitting to.