One thing you can try, and it’s known to help, is to connect the external keyboard to the system through a USB hub that has its own power source i.e., the USB hub doesn’t power down when your system enters sleep mode. If you do not see it, it likely means that you’ve run into a hardware barrier. If you see your keyboard on the list then it can indeed wake the system. This command will return a list of all hardware that can wake the system from sleep. Open Command Prompt with admin rights and run the following commands. Make sure the external keyboard that you want to use to wake your Windows 10 laptop is connected to it. Bear in mind that if there’s a hardware problem preventing the system from waking, you might have to buy new or additional hardware. Regardless, here’s what you need to do if you want to wake a Windows 10 laptop from sleep from an external keyboard.

This might be a hardware problem, or it might be a software issue. External keyboards and mice can also be used to wake a Windows 10 laptop from sleep but you’ll find that often, they do nothing. A Windows 10 laptop that has entered Sleep mode can be ‘waken’ by pressing the power button on the laptop, or by tapping a key on the built-in keyboard.

Laptop not waking up from sleep