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.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

0 comments

116 additional answers

Anonymous

2018-10-19T20:47:40+00:00

I found mine in 0003 but previously (before 1809), it was in 0002, so maybe this is being moved after each half yearly feature update?
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2018-10-05T22:15:59+00:00

Hi DM，

I got a pro4 and has the flickering screen as well. I post here and they suggest your solution for me.

Unfortunately it doesn't work. Also my pro4 flickers even with charging.

Do you know or hear from Microsoft team if they received any complain like this?

Sorry to bother but I just feel desperate. I went back to store so many times and called three times. No one knows how to solve it.

Thank you.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2018-09-12T23:12:12+00:00

Hi Patrick,

Very interesting you don't have the "FeatureTestControl" setting where I pointed to it... First I heard of this...

Perhaps Microsoft changed things to remove FeatureTestControlfrom the location I had pointed out.Interestingly, I decided to search my registry, and not only do I have the one I mentioned that I modified, there are three I see in the Video section you mentioned too. However, all three of the Video entries on mine are set to: **0x00009250.**Since i didn't touch these three in the past, it might very well be the case that setting the FeatureTestControlas I did also changed them in the Video section. Given this, I would think changing all three would make sense and see if that does it. You could always restore that if it didn't work for some reason.

It is definitely very annoying to have the flicker happening so if no one else gives you feedback I would think it would be worth trying.

As always consider backing up your registry as mentioned in the posts before doing anything.

Hope that helps a bit.

-DM51
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2018-09-12T04:22:08+00:00
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi,

I'm not sure if others have had the same experience as me - I purchased an SB2 15" earlier in Jun this year and not surprisingly was experiencing the same problems of the screen flicker due to the adaptive contrast function.

I followed the instructions above to locate the "FeatureTestControl" entry under the subfolder(s) indicated above but was not able to locate it.

However, I used the search function and that directed me to a subfolder under "Video" instead of "Class" - I found three "FeatureTestControl" entries in three further subfolders. All three entries indicate a value of 0x00009240 - I am wondering if I will get the same result if I modify these entry values to 50?

I've seen other users finding the "FeatureTestControl" entries in other subfolders under "Class" but have not come across anyone finding it under the "Video" subfolder.

Hope someone can shed some light on this? I'm using the SB2 for photo editing and cannot risk the chance of the adaptive contrast messing up my color calibrations.

Cheers,

Patrick
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments