Surface Pro 7 pen pressure issues with palm rejection

Anonymous
2019-11-01T19:50:11+00:00

Pen works fine when only the pen is making contact with the screen. However, when my palm is resting on the screen, the pressure detection of the pen becomes extremely inaccurate. As soon as skin (palm, fingers, etc) makes contact with the screen, the pressure curve of the pen becomes a staircase, as if the pen could only detect 5-20 levels of pressure, instead of 4096 like it's supposed to. Here's a screenshot from the Surface app:![](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/cdc3b0c5-bfcc-4409-b0a1-318885287f48?platform=QnAAnd here is how it looks like when drawing:

Is this normal? How can I fix it?

Device: Surface Pro 7 Model 1866 i5 (8GB RAM, 128GB SSD)

OS: Windows 10 Home Version 1903 build 18362.449 (edit: I've since updated to 1909 build 18363.628, issue persists)

Pen: Microsoft Surface Pen Model 1776 (Burgundy) 

I have:

  • paired my pen
  • unpaired and repaired the pen via Bluetooth options
  • rebooted the Surface Pro
  • soft reset the Surface Pro (volume+ and power buttons down for 15 seconds)
  • removed and reinserted the battery into the pen (only way I could think of turning it off and on again)
  • checked Windows Updates
  • checked for app updates via Windows Store
  • run the Surface Diagnostic Toolkit, no problems detected
  • tried with and without Settings → Devices → Pen & Windows Ink → Ignore touch input when I'm using my pen
  • set the correct hand I'm using from pen settings
  • tried in multiple different apps, including Surface app, Adobe Photoshop, Krita, Sketchable, Autodesk SketchBook and others — same problem everywhere
  • tried calibrating the pen (search "calibrate" from start menu and choose pen calibration), a dialog opens after choosing "Calibrate..." → "Pen input", asks for permission, and just makes a sound and closes after I grant permission, so I'm not sure if it's not working correctly, but nothing changed either way — tried to do this multiple times, rebooting in between, but doesn't seem to do anything
Surface | Surface Pro | Display and screen

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-04-12T22:32:00+00:00

    What do you mean by "full online repair"?  Did you do a factory reset?  Or do you mean sent it in to MS?

    If I have to reset my Pro X to have a shot at fixing this, I'll have to look into a way to turn off cumulative updates but still receive virus updates I guess.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-04-11T02:57:20+00:00

    Agreed. I wish I had seen this thread before I bought one.  I hope it's not a defect in the n-trig hardware.

    Microsoft clearly didn't test this with artists.....

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-03-11T15:42:48+00:00

    I did the same, but I still have a trembling! This is noticeable when drawing neat lines in digital painting...

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-03-11T14:05:33+00:00

    For various reasons my pc seemed to have been getting slower in working with Office. No viruses present. So despite hating the new Office 365 icons etc. (hence I had rolled back to a prev version), I bit the bullet and did a full online repair. 

    Miraculously, jitter has gone, lines are smooth, and my pen is behaving as a mouse properly like it had before the weirdness set in. The random palm problem has also gone and I no longer have any blotches/random inking. Perhaps there was something in a Windows update that clashes with something in some basic Office component (perhaps also used in other software)? My drivers are unchanged. 

    So my problem appears to be solved, until the next Windows update I guess (I have them switched off at the moment as it seems there are so many problems with latest ones).

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-02-22T23:51:45+00:00

    Any update on this? This 'bug' really makes me want to throw the device out of the window. Are all new surface devices affected by this? Any chance it will be fixes on a software level?

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