Prevent screen turning off when lid is closed

Is there a way to prevent the screen from being turned off when a laptop's lid is closed? The power-action for closing the lid is already "do nothing".

ispiro

Posted 2016-07-06T20:53:31.027

Reputation: 1 259

More info please. Firstly, why do you need that. Maybe there's smoe other possibilities to do what ou want. Secondly, what's the videosystem. Intel? ATI+Intel? GTX+Intel? – Alexandr Kovalchuk – 2016-07-06T21:04:03.967

That setting should be enough. If you open the lid directly after closing it, is the screen still on? You may be looking at the if you do nothing, turn off the screen setting too. – LPChip – 2016-07-06T21:12:11.593

@AlexandrKovalchuk It's just Intel. I think it's built in. – ispiro – 2016-07-06T21:17:35.080

2I have this same problem and it's really pissing me off. ASUS ROG Strix, NVidia 980m. It is set to "Do Nothing" but the display clearly goes off when the lid gets a couple inches from the keyboard. When you open it again, you can see the entire screen do a weird refresh. This is causing me to be unable to gamestream while lid is closed which is inconvenient. – Devil's Advocate – 2017-02-14T04:38:40.670

Windows 10 x64. – Devil's Advocate – 2017-02-14T04:39:20.027

I have disabled G-Sync, because that was my best guess. It didn't help. – Devil's Advocate – 2017-02-14T04:39:48.273

2@Scott Sometimes, it's a hardware switch - in which case, there might not be anything you can do about it short of physically removing the sensor responsible for it. If you want to make sure it's not the OS, try while in the firmware config menu - if the screen still turns off there, it's not the OS. Or try while booting from CD/USB. – Bob – 2017-02-14T05:15:52.753

In theory, you might be able to locate it and shield the magnet its picking up with an appropriate material. – Journeyman Geek – 2017-02-14T05:18:01.140

A laptop model would help. We can attempt to find if a hardware solution exists – shrmn – 2017-02-14T06:02:28.357

Answers

Go to gpedit.msc and setting the Select the lid switch action options for both "on battery" and "plugged in" to "Enabled" and then restart the PC.

Be sure to fully power cycle and reboot the machine once you apply these settings

Pimp Juice IT

Posted 2016-07-06T20:53:31.027

Reputation: 29 425

1Does not apply to Home versions of Windows. – Devil's Advocate – 2017-02-14T05:22:49.590

Thanks, but I'm not sure I want to install group policy editor from DeviantArt... actually, I am sure. I don't want to. :) – Devil's Advocate – 2017-02-14T05:27:58.987

@Scott I'm sure there's an equivalent registry setting that the above GP settings do thru the GUI then... – Pimp Juice IT – 2017-02-14T05:37:00.233

Yeah, I've been digging for it. – Devil's Advocate – 2017-02-14T05:37:27.270

@Scott You may have already found them but Poweshell and/or WMIC command line may be useful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15455864/powershell-set-lid-close-action.... Look here too... http://superuser.com/questions/874849/change-what-closing-the-lid-does-from-the-commandline

– Pimp Juice IT – 2017-02-14T05:41:19.150

how did you do the comments like that in your screenshots? – DeerSpotter – 2017-02-20T15:10:01.097

@Scott I was curious if you every found a solution to this such as the regedit settings that correlate the GP setting, etc.? – Pimp Juice IT – 2017-02-24T14:32:50.497

It's not clear to me how this is different from selecting lid action through the control panel, which I assume the OP already did? The options in the screenshot seem to just mirror those in control panel. I know I've disabled the lid completely before, by replacing the ACPI Lid device's driver with a magic arbitrary built-in Microsoft driver. Can't remember which driver it was though. – Sirap – 2018-03-18T23:11:37.717

Yes that is correct, sometimes there is more than one way to solve the same problem so I agree that it could be not applicable to some system but maybe it is for others but I cannot emulate every system, version, etc. of the OS to confirm but at the time this was answered for the person that asked, I assume this was the answer they liked or at least for the bounty portion I was awarded if that's why you ask. I answer and just forget all the details sometimes and just don't dwell on it. I'm not sure what driver it could be but very interesting indeed sip sipping on some si-syrup [ @Sirap ] – Pimp Juice IT – 2018-03-18T23:19:22.270

Thanks. Since the bounty was set by @ScottBeeson and the OP didn't accept this answer, as well as explicitly stated that "do nothing" had been set already, I had to assume that it didn't answer OP's question. Still, had to ask, hoping there was something I had overlooked. – Sirap – 2018-03-18T23:26:15.257

Had it saved as a favorite. Here's the only method that has worked for me: https://superuser.com/a/380038/36197

– Sirap – 2018-03-18T23:32:24.217

@Sirap True and very nice, I just gave that 1 for yet another approach. As long as we all continue to share detail we'll keep it moving as fast as things change. – Pimp Juice IT – 2018-03-18T23:34:48.680

My open-source application Policy Plus has an Element Inspector tool that shows the affected Registry values for a given policy setting (cc @ScottBeeson). It can run and work on Home editions too, assuming that those editions respect the Registry setting, which is true for most but not all policies.

– Ben N – 2018-05-30T19:10:57.063

@BenN I never looked that over before... very interesting. I scanned via https://www.virustotal.com/ and it appears safe there. I'm going to test this on a VM at some point and test out the functionality; thanks for sharing your project.

– Pimp Juice IT – 2018-05-30T20:04:47.623

Replacing the ACPI Lid device's driver as described in this answer is the only thing that has ever solved this problem for me. It's so worth the drawbacks if you're using external displays, being able to close and open the lid without fullscreen apps crashing (e.g. old games) or messing up all the windows that you've carefully laid out on multiple monitors.

Sirap

Posted 2016-07-06T20:53:31.027

Reputation: 323

I've always thought this was functionality controlled by the BIOS, given that lid close => screen off also happens before Windows is booted. But I guess it makes sense Windows can override it via ACPI seeing as ACPI allows it to do the same thing with the power button etc. TIL... – qasdfdsaq – 2018-05-30T19:14:19.660

Since your operating system is saying "Do Nothing", the issue is not likely settings within the operating system. Check your system's firmware configuration. In other words, go into BIOS setup or (U)EFI setup.

Details may vary between different computers, but look for options related to screen, power, sleep, performance, or hibernate.

TOOGAM

Posted 2016-07-06T20:53:31.027

Reputation: 12 651

Not the OP, but placed a bounty. No related settings in the BIOS on my ASUS. :( – Devil's Advocate – 2017-02-14T05:05:58.187

What's the use case for this? - answers kind of depend on that.

If this is to stop the "desktop shuffle" cause by closing the lid with an external then setting the external display as the primary helps - until you unplug it while the machine is on.

If it's the actual display You need on it might be harder as this is controlled by a hardware switch (old laptops used to have a little button at the top) possibly inside the hinge on more modern machines.

Depending on model it might be in setup menu, but equally it might be a physical power supply that disconnects as well.

I don't know how but setting up an emulated external display could well provide you with some functionality as the machine will believe it still has an active display.

Nate

Posted 2016-07-06T20:53:31.027

Reputation: 150

Not OP, bounty provider, but for me this is related to Gamestream. I stream to my shield from my laptop but if the lid is closed it constantly drops frames and loses connections. If I have my laptop open on the table next to me everything works fine, as soon as I close the lid it starts getting choppy and eventually disconnects. Even if I start the session with the lid closed it is still sketchy. – Devil's Advocate – 2017-02-16T15:23:22.973

If your problem is the weird refresh that happens when you open the lid : I had the same problem and found that it was coming from the driver of my graphic card (NVidia GeForce GTX 965M). I tried different version of the driver without any improvment.

The solution I found was to switch to the basic video card driver provided by Windows (you do this using the Device Manager). Now, no more weird refresh for me.

Axel

Posted 2016-07-06T20:53:31.027

Reputation: 1

So is this an answer to the actual question? It looks like you are responding to a comment.

– G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica' – 2018-06-12T01:28:47.617

I would like to suggest Policy Plus for this answer.

Policy Plus is an open source alternative to gpedit.msc for those who don't have Professional Windows verions and I was able to follow the guide by Pimp Juice (current top answer). Be warned though, you'll have to grab the current polices by going to Help -> Aquire AMDX File in Policy.

Emmanuel Lopez

Posted 2016-07-06T20:53:31.027

Reputation: 1

-1

This is an old thread, but I just found an answer that works for me...

When you close the lid and your connected monitors turn off, with the Do Nothing option on, simply move your mouse to wake the extended monitors up.

Alex Lim

Posted 2016-07-06T20:53:31.027

Reputation: 1