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

2018-01-10T03:54:13+00:00

Hi AL,

Thanks for the additional information.

Based on that, it sounds to me, unfortunately, this issue is a different issue than the initial one i reported in this thread.

This issue you are seeing should probably get its own thread to get Microsoft's attention (my thought anyway) as i don't see this.

I would also recommend it get posted in the Feedback hub and have people upvote it since I was told by Microsoft (when working the issue i posted) that the feedback hub is a direct link into Microsoft Engineering. They look at the issues with the most upvotes first and work their way down from there.

Hope that helps some.

-DM51
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Anonymous

2018-01-10T03:18:14+00:00

Hey DM,

Sincemy model is the base one, i dont have anything related to NVidia. I am seeing the full black pixel bar coming on and off super quickly, the same major issue as everyone else.
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Anonymous

2018-01-10T03:02:26+00:00

Hi,

I looked at the video and tried this many time with different backgrounds, etc. and though my eyes aren't what they used to be, i am not seeing anything noticeable on my SB2.

It seems like you are referring to a flicker effect on the right top edge of the Microsoft Edge window, correct?

I followed the steps outlined.

It could be I am not sensitive to what you guys are seeing or i have something different about my SB2 config that has the problem not visible.

The first thing that occurs to me that might want to be verified:

Are you running GEFORCE Experience?

What driver are you running?

I have the latest version: 390.65

If not using this, might be worth a try.

I also have the latest updates from Microsoft.

I would be curious if others on this thread are seeing this issue too (that had the issue in this thread resolved from the registry fixed).

-DM51
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Anonymous

2018-01-10T02:48:30+00:00

Welp. Nothing. Even after the update. Almost everything on 0000 got moved to 0001, so i changed it again. And nothing. Still same issue
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