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
    2018-05-15T02:11:51+00:00

    Hi D,

    The issue you are talking about is different than the one i created this thread for.

    Unfortunately, my thread is so big now, you might have missed reference to this different one that is for your issue.

    Here is the information from an entry in my thread:

    So I've started a new thread for everyone affected by the flickering on the top edge of the screen.

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfbook-surfdrivers/surface-book-screen-top-edge-flickering/d0cd71fe-c9d0-460b-b9c1-d1330385b582

    I've also created an entry on the Feedback Hub app to get more visibility from the Microsoft Engineering team - as suggested by DM51: https://aka.ms/Lo911v (You need to have the app installed to open the link).

    Please help us sort this out.

    Hope that helps!

    -DM51

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-05-14T20:24:43+00:00

    Hi DM51, 

    I was excited when I read about your fix. I have the SB2 13.5" and am experiencing the same issue. Flicker at the top of the screen, stops when I plug in the power cable.

    I was able to locate the registry entry you mentioned and changed the value from 40 to 50. However, this did not change anything about the flickering. Do you, or anyone else, happen to know whether there is another registry entry to change for the 13.5" version? It seems like it's mostly 13.5" folks that still experience the problem.

    Thanks for your help!

    D

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-05-06T23:38:50+00:00

    Hi Paul,

    I would agree, if you already tried all the updates, etc. (which it sounded like you did) or match the updates with your church SB2 and no difference, i would take it back too. Since you are well within the window for returning it, they should take care of it.

    Hope it works out well.

    -DM51

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-05-06T21:23:26+00:00

    Hi DM51!

    Thank you for replying to my post. My gut feeling is that my SB2 is defective. I am well within the 14 day return, and am planning to exercise that option as I simply can't justify holding onto such an expensive device knowing that there is an underlying issue that does not look to be software related.

    I took the unit to a local MS Store (not the one where I purchased it). The technician didn't strike me as really being interested in really looking into the issue. His response was "Based upon your description of the problems, my opinion is that this is being caused by driver updates, and I should not see this happening again". Needless to say, I'm not very happy with the way that the technician handled my concern.  He couldn't give me a straight answer about why my Chuch's SB2 (i5) doesn't have the screen going bright and then going black, but my unit does. He kept saying that it was a driver update situation.

    Well one day later, everything is still happening. The unit repeated the dim to full to dark issue 2x when logging on to type this reply. I did record the events on my smartphone and plan to show it at the Store.

    I am going to take it back on Tuesday and, see how Microsoft handles defective returns that are within the 14 day window.

    Thank you again!

    Paul

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