Surface Book 2 screen flicker issue

Anonymous

Hi,

I have the 15" SB2 and am experiencing a screen flicker issue. Here are the details:

You have to be using battery only, will not happen when charging SB2
You have to have brightness below say 35 or 40% - harder to see when brighter though still seems to me to be there
They way to reproduce this is as follows:

a. Choose a solid background - I used the "Cool Blue" solid color.

b. Have a window with a lot of WHITE background available

c. With nothing open, just desktop background with solid color, open window with a lot of WHITE background

d. Look at the white area and do you see flickering?

e. Looking closely at this, if you see it, you can see there is a stepping function of some sort that goes about 10 times getting slightly brighter each time/flicker. After the 10th or so time, it stabilizes and stops.

f. Next, if you close the window and go back to just the solid background, you see it do a similar flicker and you can see it step back down in brightness about 10 times and again stabilizes/stops.

I did call Microsoft yesterday about this and they had two 15" models and saw this on both and said it shouldn't do this and there would be a fix for this coming.

My reason for posting this is I have two questions:

Microsoft, can you tell me when this will be fixed and how I can find out about the fix? I am assuming it will be a software fix? I forgot to ask this...
Is everyone seeing this or just a good number of SB2's?

Obviously, I just got this SB2 and if everyone is seeing it, I am less concerned as I expect a fix will be coming. However, if there are only a few SB2's seeing this, I am wondering if I should return it and get a new one as perhaps it might be just a couple SB2's.

Thanks!

-DM

-Dave

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

Hi,

I have a significant update:

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working with Microsoft Tech Support (who was interfacing with MS Engineering). Today, I spent some time with tech support testing out a possible fix for this issue. I am VERY PLEASED to report, it appears they have given me a fix that WORKS!!!!!

The fix is a very simple registry setting. I have been playing with things since making the change and have not seen the issue anymore...

This clearly works with Surface Book 2. I don't know if it will work for other surface devices but if you have this registry entry, you can try making the change. The step to fix is as follows:

Open up Regedit (to edit registry)
Backup your registry before making the change - Once in Regedit, Right-Click on Computer, then Export to backup file, can put on desktop...
In the image below, it shows you where the registry entry is. You need to find this, locate the "FeatureTestControl" entry where the image shows you to find it. The value for FeatureTestControl should show: 0x00009240. Right-Click on this entry and modify binary, change the 40 to 50. Then exit registry.

Note, as indicated on left side, I had to select 0001. If for some reason you don't see FeatureTraceControl there, you could check 0000 just above 0001. Again, I saw it at entry 0000.

Once you have exited registry, Reboot system

Again, this worked for me and hopefully for you.

Let me know if this works for you.

Thanks,

DM51

P.S. Great work by Microsoft getting this resolved!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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116 additional answers

Anonymous

2018-01-08T05:54:38+00:00

Hello DM,

I really appreciate all the time that you took with the MS engineer and the research time you put into the issue. But for me sadly the registry fix did not fix anything, I have the SB 2 Base model ie: i5 with the Intel iGPU 13 inch, do you have an alternative fix? or maybe you have heard something else? please do let me know. I would really regret to have to go to Best Buy and exchange it again, since I exchanged the previous one due to Charger issues. Plus I really love the SB2.

Please do let me know, thanks!

AG
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Anonymous

2018-01-07T22:26:18+00:00

I would also add that as DM51 indicated in his original post, this appears to be more of a stepping function in that the screen gets noticeably brighter in steps and then stabilizes and not just a constant flicker. If you are seeing a constant flicker you might try the registry fix to see if it helps. If not, you probably have a different issue that requires Microsoft attention an might consider undoing the registry settings you just made and reaching out to Microsoft directly.
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Anonymous

2018-01-07T04:35:54+00:00

There is a registry fix posted by DM51, there is a patch coming from MS #Sooners, the fix came from his collaboration with MS engineers. In this thread a few pages back, you will find the registry fix. It is temporary until the permanent one is pushed to us.
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Anonymous

2018-01-06T13:25:12+00:00

Hi DM51 and Microsoft

I recently purchased 2 of the surface books being the surface book 2 , 13inch i7, 16 GB, 1 TB and a 13inch i7, 16GB , 512GB and I noticed after using the 1TB one I was have flicurring issues on top of the screen , its very small but it is there and then tested the 512GB unit, and it has the exact same problem.

The units we purchased in Australia and are only about 2 weeks old , and then I then I googled this up and found you guys so it is clear there is an issue with the screen fliccuring and extremely noticeable with the white blue and grey backrounds, I took a video and uploaded to youtube here on this link , look at the top right corner and see it

https://youtu.be/faWLZhNdKBM

Microsoft please address

Thanks

Ebrahim
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