Power/Shutdwon button missing from my Surface Pro 3 Start Screen

I noticed on my Surface Pro 3 device that it doesn't have the Power/Shutdown Button on the Start Menu. This Surface is fully patched with Windows 8.1 Update 1 and all other subsequent updates.

My Surface device was upgraded from the Windows Professional version to the Enterprise version and I was suspecting that its a Windows issue till I came to a recent KB by Microsoft that its not enabled on Surface Pro 3 and it will mainly depend on the device Hardware not the Windows OS.

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2959188?wa=wsignin1.0

Note: An entry of "Slate" in the Device Type column means that the hardware reported a Power Platform Role of PlatformRoleSlate. To determine what a system is reporting, run the powercfg /energy command and check the Platform Role in the output.


According to the above mentioned table Surface Pro 3 will not have a Power Button on the Start Screen.

To customize or change this behavior by adding the power button you will need to follow the following steps:

1. Open the Registry (regedit)
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER
3. Create a new Key and name it "Launcher"
4. In the Launcher key create new DWORD value named Launcher_ShowPowerButtonOnStartScreen
5. Right click on the new DWORD - Properties
6. Change the Decimal Value to 1 (0=default which means it won't appear)
7. Reboot the machine

This issue was weird since Surface Pro 2 will get this Power button. Anyways hopefully this blog post can clear this issue.