How do I correct display scaling issues on Surface Pro 4

Anonymous

I'm noticing display scaling issues and docking issues on the Surface Pro 4. I'm using the docking connector and have two Dell 24" Ultrasharp U2415 monitors. When I undock the Surface, the text is aliased very poorly on the Surface display, not crisp as it should be. Certain elements appear fine, but my browser, Outlook 2016, and other apps have poor quality text. A restart is required to get the text back to its normal hi-DPI quality.

Secondly, if I start a program while undocked and dock the surface, some apps are scaled up (both text and UI elements of the window) and others are fine.

Lastly, a few times when the SP4 is docked and I return from being away for a few minutes, my external displays don't kick on. Clicking the mouse or pressing keys on the keyboard do nothing. Occasionally, the SP4 display will activate and my mouse/keyboard will control work. I've tried disconnecting the dock connector, power cycling the dock, but only restarting the SP4 will correct this issue.

In general a restart is required to resolve any of these issues. Is this the result of buggy display drivers or something else?

I've installed the latest SP4 firmware update and have the latest OS updates through Windows Update, as of this morning, February 19, 2016.

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Anonymous

Hello SP4_user11,

A lot of work was done in Windows 10 to support high resolution screens, such as the Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, Surface Book, and third-party laptops and tablets with screen resolutions above 1080p. However, there are issues that occur when using Office apps on these devices when connecting to an external monitor with a lower resolution.

To find out more about what has been improved and what is still being worked on, please check out these articles:

The current and future improvements are dependent on having Windows 10 Creators Update installed. So if you have not yet updated, please start with that.

Best Regards

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52 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-04-27T15:28:33+00:00

I am also experiencing the issue where, if I dock my Surface Pro 4 without logging out first, the scaling is all out of whack on my two monitors. The icons are huge and spaced apart.

My workaround was to create a batch file that killed and restarted EXPLORER.EXE. This fixes the icons and doesn't require me to log out. The commands are:

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

start explorer.exe

I'm somewhat glad to see that others are experiencing this issue. Hopefully it'll be fixed with a future release of Windows.
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Anonymous

2016-05-02T18:00:12+00:00

This is not the fix, its an issue with Windows 10 and Scaling, it has nothing to do with the Surface per se, its just that the apps that don't support scaling are 'static' to the scaling you log in with. that's why logging out and back in fixes the issue. this is either something that needs to be addressed by the OS, or by the app vendors.

the worst part, is that many apps by Microsoft don't support this, like Skype for biz and Edge.

Just bad collaboration between teams I suppose.
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Anonymous

2016-05-02T19:09:46+00:00

Sorry Brian, but the April updates didn't fix this. I still get scaling issues when I re-dock my Surface. Only fixes are to crash Explorer or log out/log in.
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Anonymous

2016-05-02T19:33:07+00:00

Sorry Brian, but the April updates didn't fix this. I still get scaling issues when I re-dock my Surface. Only fixes are to crash Explorer or log out/log in.

You might want to check to see if your dock has the latest firmware using the Surface Dock Updater. It's part of Surface Tools downloadable HERE!
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