Flickering screens turn Microsoft Surface Books into Microsoft Surface paperweights (Ruh-roh!)

The Register ^ | Oct 28, 2015 | Shaun Nichols

[dayglored]

Redmond confirms display spasm fix coming

People who bought the first batch of Microsoft's Surface Book slab-tops are furious that a glitch causes the screens to flicker.

Microsoft's support forums and the Surface subreddit are filled with folks claiming their displays erratically wink completely on and off. This happens, we're told, whether the tablet is running on its own or when it's docked in its base station.

Microsoft has confirmed a fix is on the way.

"A small number of customers have flagged some issues with their Surface Book," a Redmond spokesperson told The Register. "We are working hard to resolve them quickly and easily with Windows Update."

"Spent about 2 hours with tech support on the phone. All we did was a complete factory reset and reinstall the latest firmware and drivers. One hour later, the flicker started right back up."

While the cause of the flickering has not yet been determined, users have suggested the problem may be related to Hyper-V, as some reported that disabling the Windows 10 hypervisor alleviates the flickering issue.

[dayglored]

DANG!

[dayglored]

Looks like early manufacturing issues. They'll work it out ... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

[the_daug]

Nokia 2520 does this with Verizon contract. Bye Bye Verizon!

[smokingfrog]

Bad driver?

[dfwgator]

“That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”

[ThunderSleeps]

That’s what I’m thinking. A driver/kernel thread doesn’t have the right priority, or is waiting on a mutex that’s blocking it. Something is holding up the screen refresh.

[Nifster]

If that is an actual display then Redmond has bigger problems than they even know

[dayglored]

> "That's not a bug, that's a feature."

That'll be a tough sell.

[Nifster]

Nope this is an issue of break down of the lad itself....bad manufacturing

[Nifster]

Not software

[dayglored]

> Bad driver?

Yeah, seems like it. Especially if they think they can fix it with a purely software patch.

[dayglored]

> Nope this is an issue of break down of the lad itself....bad manufacturing

That's what I thought at first, too. But a well-buggered driver could produce that effect, too.

The part of the description that scared me was about how mechanical changes would cause it to go away for a while, but it would return. That doesn't normally happen with purely software problems.

I dunno... sure glad I'm not on the Engineering team at MS for this one.

[Steely Tom]

I don’t want to be a Microsoft beta tester.

Which is why I don’t go for their “free Win 10 upgrade” scam.

That and the fact that anything free is worth what you pay for it.

[UCANSEE2]

Windows 10 Hypervisor.

[ThunderSleeps]

Dang. That’s going to be harder and more expensive to fix then.

[dayglored]

> ...anything free is worth what you pay for it.

When you go somewhere where everything is "free", it means you're not the CUSTOMER, you are the PRODUCT.

Look around to see who is paying for you to be there. They just bought you.

[montag813]

Would be awesome to line them up in a grid to use as a dance floor...

[dayglored]

That’s pure genius!

[Grampa Dave]

Anyone with a low seizure threshold, needs to be in another room with that, and not looking at it.

[Grampa Dave]

What does a paper weight like that cost?