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

2017-11-27T00:09:33+00:00

Hi Dave,

Since you spoke with our Answer Desk Team. We suggest that you visit the nearest Microsoft Store or where you bought your Surface Book 2. so that our technical personnel will check your device physically and provide you options for your device. Click here to get the nearest store in your area.

Let us know the outcome.

Hi Richard (Microsoft),

Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving Holiday!

Thanks very much for the response.

I must admit though, I was hoping for a more substantive response since I *think* this is widespread.

I was hoping Microsoft would test a lot of SB2's and confirm it is with all of them tested or not and more importantly root cause the issue and let me know what the issue is and how/when it might be fixed. We have two people on this thread and myself, two SB2's that were checked by Microsoft Answer Desk and all had the issue I reported. Right now, I don't know of *any* that don't have this issue (though perhaps there are)?

Anyway, it would be really useful if you could ask engineering or test engineering (or whomever) at Microsoft to pursue this and come back after testing and troubleshooting what the issue is and when/how it will be fixed?

Seems like something like this would make sense, agreed?

Thanks for considering.

I can also stop in a Microsoft store when I have a chance (though none convenient to me) to have a talk with them about this but I suspect I will get to the same place as I have outlined above.

Let me know your thoughts?

Thanks,

-DM

P.S. Other than this annoyance, great SB!!!
Was this answer helpful?

2 people found this answer helpful.

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2017-11-27T23:00:06+00:00

Happy Thanksgiving to you too Dave, thank you for the update. Well about your questions, the reason why we suggest that you visit a Microsoft Store is because our tech personnel will be checking your device to know the root cause of the issue. And they can forward this to our tech engineer. Though it's a bit inconvenient to you, there's a big possibility that your issue will be resolved and they will provide you reasonable options for your device.

Please keep us updated.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2017-11-28T06:05:26+00:00

Just tried it on mine and I can see it. It's very subtle but it there is a flickering. It is specially noticeable when switching between a white and a color. I would think this is a software issue.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2017-11-28T18:29:57+00:00
Happy Thanksgiving to you too Dave, thank you for the update. Well about your questions, the reason why we suggest that you visit a Microsoft Store is because our tech personnel will be checking your device to know the root cause of the issue. And they can forward this to our tech engineer. Though it's a bit inconvenient to you, there's a big possibility that your issue will be resolved and they will provide you reasonable options for your device.

Please keep us updated.

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the information.

Yesterday, I opted to call Microsoft Surface Book Technical support and worked with one of the tech support folks there for a few hours on the issue. We did several things:
1. Ran the diagnostic troubleshooter - no issues found
2. Updated to the Fall Creators Update (since my SB2 had 1703 version). Made sure all updates were installed.
3. Checked various driver revisions, etc.
4. Etc.
The problem still persists after all of the above.

The person I was working with agreed this should not be happening.

Right now we have 6 confirmed SB2s/cases of this with NO reported SB2s (who follow the steps I outlined or similar) that do not see this.

A ticket was opened and the issue is being escalated for root cause analysis and they will report back to me soon.

I will provide an update to this thread when I get some useful information.

Note, I did use the word 'flickering' and to some extent that might be a little misleading. It is more of what I referred to as stepping up in brightness when you bring white window up when you have darker background and stepping down in brightness when you return back to the darker background. This stepping occurs about 6 - 10 times in each direction when you do this and then stabilizes. It is subtle increase and decrease in brightness each step (giving what I called a flickering effect). Just thought I would mention this to be clear in case it wasn't.

I will report back when I have more information.

Thanks,

-DM
Was this answer helpful?

1 person found this answer helpful.

0 comments No comments