Surface Pro 4, Screen Flickering, Shaking

Cause: If there is noting being animated/moving on the screen, then this problem starts appearing and the screen starts flickering.

Solution: There must be some animation or motion on the screen. It can be as small as blinking cursor on the place of entering text, animated screensaver or mouse pointer motion. Of course, none of these options is available everytime e.g. when we are just reading a static pdf page of webpage etc. So here is a smart way... CHANGE THE MOUSE POINTER INTO AN ANIMATED POINTER from themes setting, because the mouse pointer is the only thing that always remain available on your screen.

Follow the steps below;

**Step 1:**Right-click on desktop, and click 'Personalize'

**Step 2:**Click on 'Themes'

**Step 3:**Click on 'Mouse cursor'

**Step 4:**In the 'Mouse Properties' setting window, select 'Normal Select' under 'Customize' list.

Step 5: Click 'Browse' button

Step 6: In the Browse window, select any cursor file ending with '.ani' file extension. (e.g. I chose 'aero_working_xl')

Step 7: Click 'Open' button

Step 8: Click 'OK' button to close 'Mouse Properties' window

Step 9: ...Enjoy, as problem is gone

[Note: Remember sometimes you bring your mouse pointer to certain places where it becomes static (e.g. a hand cursor under hyperlinks). In such cases, the screen may start flickering again, there is frozen screen and there is nothing else on the screen being animated/moving for long. However no sooner you move your pointer away from the hyperlink, and it becomes an animated cursor, it again becomes normal.]

Thanks

Best Regards

Amad Raja

A good and reassuring point which I should have realised given that my external display remains unaffected.

For what it's worth, if you are doing a presentation while projecting to an external display, you should have no problem.  Many people confirm that external displays are not affected, only the actual Surface display.

Thanks for your overview of the issue.  Very sad story.

My SP4 was one of the first released on 2015 and had to be replaced under warranty very soon thereafter due to overheating and fan noise, so no more warranty.  I'm still wondering if this could be a problem caused by overheating because of poor fan control.

I have only ever experienced the heating/jitter problem since I started video editing.

You worry me when you say there may be an issue with PowerPoint.  I don't need failures in public presentations!

I have an ageing HP Probook also so it might pay me to replace it something like the HP Omen gaming laptop which should handle graphics and video editing better.  Unfortunately, it seems that gaming PCs tend not to come with touchscreens.