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

2018-02-03T08:36:39+00:00

Hey DM51, you are MVP!

Thank you for the answer. Please do not assume my reg-edit wasn't done probably, I am fit.

I actually have 3 folders “0000”, “0001” and “0002”. The Value “FeatureTestControl” is only in 0001. I have changed it now again. And will test it some hours, then I will report.
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Anonymous

2018-02-03T03:17:17+00:00

Hi Bronson,

Very happy to hear this worked for you as well.

Yes, Microsoft was very helpful in working with me to get this resolved.

However, it does seem that it might not be working for some...

I am hoping some of the folks that didn't get this working with the fix will have a look at my previous updated post and perhaps try once more...

Unfortunately, Microsoft couldn't commit when the fix would come out in an update so i am not sure if it has or not either.

They definitely assured me it would happen at some point.

Like you, i have not had a flicker since doing this update and this was quite some time ago now.

Anyway, glad all is good for you.

-DM51
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Anonymous

2018-02-03T03:10:35+00:00

Hi Felix,

Interesting, seems that the fix is not working for some people. I am surprised by this as it did seem like we solved this issue across the board...

When you implemented the registry fix did you try both the 0000 and 0001 entries (on bottom left of this image i posted below)?

I assume you had both 0000 and 0001 (only these two) entries listed there?

Also, was the FeatureTestControl variable already there or did you add it?

For me, when Microsoft first tried it, they tried 0000 and the parameter was NOT there so they added it with the right setting but that didn't do anything.

Later, i removed the parameter from 0000 and went into 0001 and found the parameter was there and so i changed that value as i stated earlier in this thread and it worked. Anyway, if you have tried both 0000 and 0001 and no luck, hopefully Microsoft can comment....

Thanks,

-DM51
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Anonymous

2018-02-03T02:57:59+00:00

Hi,

I recently tried this fix and it worked amazingly, I am so impressed with what Microsoft has done for users that really are interested at taking their computing to the next level with the SB2. Its been at least a month or two since I did the fix on a new surface book 2 and I haven't had a flicker since then. I was wondering if anyone knew if they sent out an update for this yet, I just updated to the most recent update, I believe it was released on January 31, 2018-KB4058252 (OS Build 16299.214). I did not see a fixs for it and I was wondering if they were still going to or if this was a very isolated issues with only a few SB2 users. Any updates would be super helpful!

Thanks!
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