The Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book have just been released and yet those who picked up their units are already reporting problems. Most of the complaints pertain to the flickering screen of the devices, which Microsoft is yet to permanently address. But worry not for there is a temporary fix.
After the success of the Surface Pro 3, everyone awaited the arrival of its successors. Fitted with the sixth generation Intel Skylake processors, more RAM and more SSD size options, along with refined aspects of the Surface Pro 3, the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book did not disappoint and got high ratings from reviewers. Thus, when they hit the stores a few days ago, people fell in line just to get one.
However, some who got their hands on the devices were immediately faced with issues. One of the most reported ones at the moment is the flickering screen. People experiencing the problem posted it on social media to probe if there are other people having the same issues. One of such is Ali H who uploaded a video of his flickering Surface Pro 4 screen.
Others have taken the problem to Microsoft's backyard.
"Just got my unit, i7 512 GB. Applied all the updates (including the recent firmware)," wrote Jarem, a member of Microsoft's online community and one who bought a Surface Book, in a thread started last Oct. 27. "My screen keeps flickering on/off, whether or not the screen is docked. I've tried resetting but the issue still persists. It also seems independent of running apps or focused windows. Adjusting the brightness doesn't resolve the issue."
Several others have confirmed that Jarem's issue was happening to them.
"Exact same thing here. (i7, 8gb, 256gb, nvidia). It doesn't seem to do it when the screen is attached in laptop mode, but flipping the screen around makes the flicker like crazy," JohnnyLocust affirmed Jarem's problem. "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."
Meanwhile, some of the buyers found a way to temporarily fix the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book's flickering screen thanks to keen observers who noticed that the issue started after the Hyper-V feature was enabled. The problem's roots were determined and it was indeed Hyper-V that was causing the issue.
"The Windows logs also show complaints from Hyper-V that the 'GPUs are not compatible and this configuration isn't supported'," wrote nick.karasev, another member of the Microsoft community.
To disable Hyper-V, simply type: CMD into search bar. Once located, right-click on it and run it as administrator. This should bring up the command prompt. Proceed to typing the following command: dism.exe /Online /Disable-Feature:Microsoft-Hyper-V.
That should solve the problem. The fix turtorial is based on plost99's post on the same thread.
For those who really need Hyper-V, which are most-likely developers, some users have reported that changing the resolution also fixes the flickering problem. Note that this is only a temporary fix. Microsoft was reported to be aware of the issue and that its engineers are working on a permanent fix.
