Powering RP Pico with Battery

I posted earlier about using the Waveshare 1.3" display. I have that working with the IDE environment, so now I added a small power supply made from 3 AAA cells, which is outputting 4.78V and I have wired to GND and Vsys. However, when I turn power on, the program does not start. I realize I am probably committing some type of "flat-forehead" mistake, but there's something about powering the RP Pico independent of the IDE that I'm doing incorrectly.

I'm using a Win 10 machine with 32Gb of memory, a Pico plugged into a Waveshare 1.3" OLED module.

Hints:

  1. If I power the project using the USB cable in the IDE, it works like a champ:
  2. If I disconnect USB from the project, it looks like the backlight of the OLED is "on" (it is getting power), but the program does not start.
    3, If I start the program with the USB connected and disconnect the USB after the program has started, I can run the program to completion, but I cannot run another iteration without reconnecting to the IDE.

What am I missing?

Schematic diagram.

There is no schematic for the Waveshare module. The only info at

The Pico plugs into the module directly. It appears the 4 button version is no longer available, which is okay as I only need one I/O pin.

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