Surface Pro 4, Screen Flickering, Shaking

After a few weeks of research on internet, I discovered that surface with jittering problem always (at least in my case) go through these few periods:

1. At the beginning, it starts with one or several horizonal black lines showing on the screen after heavy use, however it's fine normally;
2. After days or weeks ghost image shows up as well as some minor jittering;
3. Later it gets worse, screen jitters even without heavy use, merely after a period of mild use, refreshing the screen can stop it for some time;
4. And then screen starts to jitter crazily (as soon as boot or just a few minutes/hours later) and refreshing doesn't even work, in my case there's even discoloration, it's totally unusable!
5. I tried putting it aside for a few hours after jitterring shows up, you know what the screen jittered like ****, with severe discoloration and horrible vertical and horizonal lines showing up periodically.

Note that the only way I know to eliminate the jittering is to let the screen rest for a while, and it seems that the longer it rests, the time it takes to jitter after boot is longer.

I try to describe the problem as thorough as I can, hope it can help MS engineer or anyone smart enough to solve this!

I also had the bouncing screen after a few months of using SP4. They offered to replace it and send me a dead laptop as replacement. After replacing the replacement I got a refurbished laptop with bad edge bleed in right bottom and hours less battery life than my original device.

When I bought the device I specifically asked for a later generation, but now it's replaced with one of the earlier batches with bad QC.

And the replacement has the same problem within a month!!!

MS will keep asking to reinstall and replace until warranty runs out?

I used to buy 500 usd laptops that last me 2 years, now I got a premium device at 4 times that price and so many problems. Very disappointed in MS. Wish I could get my money back so I could buy something better for half the price.

Here is how it looks now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1k-1MHquIw

I really hope more details on the issue are disclosed as soon as possible. 

Meanwhile if you have another machine and your OS is W10 Pro you could try using Remote Desktop Connection.  I had to do that with my Surface 2 Pro by using my Surface RT when the W10 CU had all kinds of ridiculous problems with its peripherals.  How can RDC outperform a normal configuration?  (Including Multiple screens being controlled remotely!)  This configuration is amazing, even for battery life (but not for the Surface RT's battery life of course <eg>).

A related idea would be trying screen casting.  Does the problem symptom occur with that configuration too?

Also, one hopeful possibility I can suggest is the (Surface Pro) Software Repair Tool.  I recently did that and so far am not tempted to go back to my RDC workaround.  However, this was my second try at using that tool, so I reserve my judgment on how effective I think it may be permanently.

However, considering how you are implying that you need to use it I suspect your machine might be on the small side, so I'm wondering if you have looked at any specific tuning ideas on that tack.  FWIW mine is 8 GB RAM and I'm wondering if it sometimes is thrashing; then in such circumstances I will do what I have often done: kill explorer.exe and use my Desktop the way I have been familiar using it since W3.1   <eg>

Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle

I had my surface switched off for about 2 weeks and I turned it a while ago and installed the updates. After that, I turned on all my heavy software and the surface went really hot but didn't flickered a bit.

I then opened the task manager and to my surprise the processor was running very low. I have core i7 modal which overclock to 3+ Ghz during my routine usage. I don't know if surface has super optimized the firmware or was it the effect of non usability. But I think my processor power has been limited. Is anyone else having the same issue? 

Also I am thinking about summarizing all of this conversation in a blog post and then refer to it tech review websites and Youtube channels. I think we have seen enough irresponsibility and kinda disrespect. We all are waiting for someone else to take the step. If anyone is up to help me spread the voice then kindly let me know. The issue went from 100 to 262 almost within a month. Its about time