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
    2018-01-09T17:41:13+00:00

    Hey PE,

        So have you changed both the entries ?

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-01-09T17:45:28+00:00

    Interestingly enough, in my first surface book there were both 0000 and 0001 and only 0001 contained FeatureTestControl, but in this one there is only an 0000.

    Since this one is a new setup, Its still downloading update 1709, after it finishes I am going to update you on that.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-01-09T17:59:36+00:00

    After trying the one in 0001 with no success I reverted it back to 0x00009240. Then changed the one in 0000 to 0x00009250 and after restarting the problema was gone.

    I  guess you can also only have either 0000 or 0001 as aleshippuden is stating.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-01-09T18:44:54+00:00

    Hi DM51 and Microsoft

    I recently purchased 2 of the surface books being the surface book 2 , 13inch  i7, 16 GB, 1 TB and a 13inch i7, 16GB , 512GB and I noticed after using the 1TB one I was have flicurring issues on top of the screen , its very small but it is there and then tested the 512GB unit, and it has the exact same problem.

    The units we purchased in Australia and are only about 2 weeks old , and then I then I googled this up and found you guys so it is clear there is an issue with the screen fliccuring and extremely noticeable with the white blue and grey  backrounds, I took a video and uploaded to youtube here on this link , look at the top right corner and see it

    https://youtu.be/faWLZhNdKBM

    Microsoft please address

    Thanks

    Ebrahim

    Hi Ebrahim,

    I have the same problem as you and probably as many other people.

    I was hoping that the temporary solution suggested by DM51 in conjunction with the Microsoft engineers for the adaptive contrast issue would also solve this, but unfortunately no. 

    So I would like to ask everyone in this thread to help us sort this out by checking if they are also affectedand perhaps create another thread if necessary.

    First, take a look at Ebrahim's youtube link (quoted above) to see what we are talking about. There is a small but noticeable flickering in the top edge of the screen.

    To replicate it follow these steps:

    1. Disconnect your computer from the battery charger;
    2. Turn on power saving;
    3. Open Edge or Chrome (It happens in many applications but those are the ones that I think it is more noticeable);
    4. Increase the screen brightness to maximum level;
    5. Do not use the touchpad or the touchscreen.

    Any feedback are welcome!

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