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

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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
    2018-01-09T02:26:21+00:00

    Thank you for your reply DM,

    Yes, I have read your thread like a thousand times, AWESOME thread, by the way. The best one, and very impressed on how you followed up with the issue.

    Yeah, I made sure that the registry binary values are those, also restarted the computer multiple times. It did not do anything, the issue persisted so I left the SB2 overnight. Today, I could not see the issue, I thought it was gone. But after an hour or two I saw it again and checked the registry values to make sure it was set at 50 and it was. I have made all kinds of attempts to fix this but nothing. So today I went to best buy to exchange it.

    Have not set up the new one yet, but after I do, definitely will reply back with an update stating if the new one has it or not.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-01-09T02:58:16+00:00

    Hi AL,

    Thanks for the update.

    Sure hope all is good with this new SB2 for you.

    Will be curious.

    Thanks,

    -DM51

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-01-09T16:55:51+00:00

    He DM,

    SO I got the new one, aaaaaaaaand. Still has the issue, and also edited the registry and nothing. Still has the same thing. Its sad because I really really like this product.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-01-09T17:35:20+00:00

    He DM,

    SO I got the new one, aaaaaaaaand. Still has the issue, and also edited the registry and nothing. Still has the same thing. Its sad because I really really like this product. 

    In regedit while following the solution proposed by DM51, try to change the FeatureTestControl in both the folder 0000 and 0001. For me only 0000 made a diference.

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