Surface Book 2 screen flicker issue

Anonymous
2017-11-20T22:26:35+00:00

Hi,

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

  1. You have to be using battery only, will not happen when charging SB2
  2. You have to have brightness below say 35 or 40% - harder to see when brighter though still seems to me to be there
  3. 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:

  1. 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...
  2. 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

Surface | Surface Book | Display and screen

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
2017-12-20T04:47:02+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:

  1. Open up Regedit (to edit registry)
  2. Backup your registry before making the change - Once in Regedit, Right-Click on Computer, then Export to backup file, can put on desktop...
  3. 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.

  1. 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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  1. Anonymous
    2017-12-04T18:59:53+00:00

    13 inch

    1TB  SSD

    16GB RAM

    Having the display flicker issue.  I'm mostly working in Office products at the moment.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-12-01T21:55:46+00:00

    Hi,

    Wanted to provide a couple interesting updates on this issue:

    1. I was called by Microsoft Tech support about the ticket I have opened on this issue. They were very helpful in debugging and further characterizing this issue. We tried numerous things (e.g. more playing with settings, disabling/enabling Intel and Nvidia graphics, disabling ALL 3rd party apps (selective startup via msconfig), etc.). None of this corrected the issue but gave us a lot more data. I am also going to try to get a video of the issue so they can see it though not sure if it will show up well enough in a video to be able to see it since it is subtle incremental steps up/down in brightness... That said, given item 2 below, not sure they need this once I provide them this information...
    2. This is MOST important update and have not updated Microsoft yet on this. I will be doing this later today. I went into Best Buy last night where I purchased this SB2. My goal was to try to reproduce this issue on both the 15" and 13" there since so far we had only seen it on 15" and it would demonstrate (if I could reproduce it there too) how widespread this issue is. What I came to discover actually shocked me. Here is what happened:

    Because the SB2s at Best Buy are secured with an alarm which is attached to the power connected to the SB2, I needed to ask a sales person to help me do this experiment (since as I reported, the issue does NOT show up when power connected). Fortunately, there was a Microsoft specialist available (who was fantastic and VERY helpful). He disconnected the Alarm on the 15" and I did the same experiment I identified in the beginning of this thread, and as expected, the problem immediately presented itself. The specialist was surprised to see it... We then moved over to the 13" and sure enough, same experiment, same result. So it seems reasonable to assume ALL SB2s have this. This is NOT what was shocking. Next, the specialist said, very interesting, let's go over to the new Surface Pro and try that. We did, and sure enough, same experiment, same result. Ok this surprised me but didn't shock me. Then the specialist said, I have my own SB1 which I have and have been using for some time. Let me get it out of my locker and let's try that. We did, and guess what, same experiment, same result. The specialist then said, you know, now that we did this, I do recall seeing this but I guess I got used to it and sort of ignored it. Note, when I say same result, I mean the same stepping function in brightness up/down as previously reported. However, we did notice some difference in speed at which it did it or magnitude of the incremental brightness increases/decreases. We then tried some other brand name laptops and as expected, the display was fixed and we didn't see this stepping function...

    What is shocking to me is not that it is on what appears to be all surface products, is that no one seems to be complaining about this. Perhaps it is me and I am (being an engineer) just hypersensitive to this? Personally, from my perspective, this should definitely be fixed. I feel a lot better knowing it is not solely my SB2 or a couple of ours that reported seeing this. However, it would be great if Microsoft can address this. I use my SB2 and prior laptops (note, this is my first Microsoft laptop) in dim lighting a lot and don't need brightness WAY UP (where you wouldn't see this if you did) and it is very visible. I will certainly NOT return my SB2 because of this, this is a GREAT machine! However, I will work with Microsoft to conclusion on this until we understand if they will fix it or not and why or why not and provide an update once I have it. 

    Anyway, thought I would provide this update.

    Thanks,

    -DM

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-11-29T01:49:27+00:00

    Thanks for the updates.

    I have responded to the ticket with Microsoft providing this information.

    I also played with display settings and so far have not been able to prevent the issue from occurring either.

    I will provide any updates I get them.

    Thanks,

    -DM

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-11-28T20:12:00+00:00

    I should have mentioned earlier that I have messed around with some of the display settings that auto adjust display intensity based upon the ambient lighting and none of these prevented the issue from occurring.

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