Brightness flickering, still no solution?!

[MxGaza33]

Hi, I've had my surface pro 2 for a couple of weeks now hoping an update would be released to fix the display brightness constantly flickering up and down.

I've tried both turning adaptive brightness off and installing the latest Intel driver which I've seen suggested on some other threads, but neither made any difference!

At first I thought it may be a software issue, but since no one seems to be mentioning it much anymore is it a hardware problem affecting just me? Watching movies at night drives me crazy to the point that it puts me off watching things on it as I can't stop noticing it.

Has anyone still got the problem after trying both suggestions above? I'm undecided whether to return/replace it or keep waiting for an update that might never come...

 

[anon(5590893)]

I haven't seen this problem on my sp 2 so my guess is it's a hardware defect.

 

[hcrick]

Keep adaptive brightness off, change power plan and/or power plan settings, factory reset the unit. Other than that it sounds like you need to get it replaced.

 

[MBytes]

Looks like the dimming circuit of the display backlight is broken...

 

[stephen_az]

Looks like the dimming circuit of the display backlight is broken...

....and you are basing this definitive statement on precisely what?

 

[MBytes]

....and you are basing this definitive statement on precisely what?

Experience on LCD monitors, with faulty PWM control back light (usually found on budget monitors) and those with a dimming circuit.
Of course, I am going with my understanding of this. I don't have the device in front of me, or have a video showing the problem.

If a re-install/refresh does not help, then it's simply a warranty replacement, no mater the actual issue.

 

[Oneofthesedays]

Your display is fine.

It's the shifty Intel integrated graphics drivers that are causing you grief. First thing you have to do is download the latest Intel drivers for the HD4400 from their website (64-bit). You can't install the drivers through the setup.Exe, it seems to be excluding the SP2 for some odd reason. You have to go into the device manager and manually update the graphics driver there. Simply extract the setup.Exe contents to a folder with WinRAR or some similar program and navigate to find the .inf file you need (forget the name).

Reboot the system. Now you should see the Intel Graphics Tray icon in your taskbar. Click on it, go to graphics properties. Go to Power. Click on "On battery", and turn off the following settings:

Display Power Savings Technologies
Extend Battery Life For Gaming

I suspect it's the first setting that has been causing the display flickering that we all have noticed. Now I can actually turn on adaptive brightness in my settings and it works GREAT. Can't believe Intel would ever include such a god awful setting and enable it by default.

 

[MxGaza33]

IT WORKED!

I had the new driver installed for it but never dawned on me to tweak any of the power settings. Thankyou!

Are these settings switched off by default for when plugged in as there's no settings for that?

 

[PandaSPUR]

Microsoft Responds to Surface 2 Overheating Issue

Overheating causes some kind of protection to kick in and dim the screen.

 

[1jaxstate1]

Seen an article where overheating will cause the screen flicker to happen, like the posh above mentions, and that a fix is on the way.

 

[Oneofthesedays]

My SP2 does not exhibit any overheating issues so I can't comment on that.

One more thing, if you have Windows Updates set to automatically install the October driver pack will reinstall once you update the Intel driver manually. You must either change the option to notify, but not install or hide the update manually. It's another little quirk I ran into after fixing the issue.

 

[Mark Dart]

I had this issue plus my videos where not playing so I got onto Surface Chat support and they suggested a refresh, this has fixed both of my issues and I have the latest updates

 

[randomscandinavian]

Your display is fine.

It's the shifty Intel integrated graphics drivers that are causing you grief. First thing you have to do is download the latest Intel drivers for the HD4400 from their website (64-bit). You can't install the drivers through the setup.Exe, it seems to be excluding the SP2 for some odd reason. You have to go into the device manager and manually update the graphics driver there. Simply extract the setup.Exe contents to a folder with WinRAR or some similar program and navigate to find the .inf file you need (forget the name).

Reboot the system. Now you should see the Intel Graphics Tray icon in your taskbar. Click on it, go to graphics properties. Go to Power. Click on "On battery", and turn off the following settings:

Display Power Savings Technologies
Extend Battery Life For Gaming

I suspect it's the first setting that has been causing the display flickering that we all have noticed. Now I can actually turn on adaptive brightness in my settings and it works GREAT. Can't believe Intel would ever include such a god awful setting and enable it by default.

Interesting! But where are these settings when you have the new drivers bundled with the December firmware update? I believe I have the same driver now through Windows Update alone, but without a tray panel I cannot find these settings that need to be turned off. A bit new to Windows.

Interestingly, the device managers shows something called an igfx Tray Module from Intel being loaded, which sounds like such a panel. But where is it?

EDIT: I tried disabling a startup item named Nengine which removed the slow jerky brightness adjustment when switching desktop modes and other things. (I removed it due to a warning of high system use). But it seemed to increase the banding on the desktop wallpaper I use on the Modern interface. For some reason the image quality on a desktop wallpaper in Modern is poorer than on the classic desktop. Another driver issue perhaps.

 

[VariableSpark]

I have this problem too. I can't seem to install the Intel tray program. I tried to update the drivers, as recommended in this and other threads, but it won't let me. It says I already have the best driver installed (even when I refresh back to no updates installed), and it won't let me rollback the graphics drivers either (implying that it's already at the "base" driver).

Does anyone have another way to install the Intel tray program?