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Surface pro 4 screen shake, freeze, horizontal lines across the screen

tjdwn1029

New Member
This is the post I posted on Microsoft Community, and I'd like to get opinion on this forum as well.

Thank you.

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Hi, I'm a surface pro 4 user in South Korea, and I purchased my surface pro 4(i5, 4GB RAM, SSD 128GB drive) when it got releases in my country, pre-ordered.


My first SP4 worked fine until last October when the screen shook and froze vigorously, and showed thin horizontal lines on the top of the screen.


I contacted Microsoft support and changed my SP4 with a refurbished SP4.


My second SP4 made clicking noises when the fan span and I had to get another refurbished product.


What I'm using is my THIRD SP4, and upon two months of usage it's screen is shaking and horizontal lines on the top of the screen is appearing again. Here is a YouTube link:


The first screen shake also started something like this, and got more and more intense.


As a fan of surface series and windows 10, I'm very disappointed, and irritated for time I've wasted on this problem


I treat my device with care, never dropped it, never applied shock or too much impact.


So I can't help but think this is innate defect SP4 comes out with.


Are you guys aware of the problem or know what causes this? I'd like to know.


I tried driver reinstalls, and my device is up to date(17/01/22).
 
Hey there.

My SP4 m3 has the same problem. I have it since last March and it has been flawless... up until two days ago when I started having the same exact issues.

I tried resetting with keeping my files cause I don't really want another fully fresh start.
It didn't work.

However since I have not mistreated it in any way and since it was working fine all this time then I want to believe that this is a software issue that will get resolved.

Would be nice to have the input of other users as well though.
 

Compusmurf

Active Member
I started having this issue after the last firmware update. Question for you. On the sp4-if you move a mouse or touch the screen-does it stop? I hid my issue with an animated pointer. I fully feel the issue is software or firmware but not a hardware issue.
 
Guys something was broken with the latest update. I sort of have not had this issue reoccur since replying the day after I replied to this thread.
Mind you though, it would appear after a lot of use and a decent amount of heat building up (while charging and using it intensively) which, since it has not reappeared for days leads me as well to assume that it's software issue.
 

icelava

New Member
The SP4 I bought last year eventually showed dead horizontal lines at the top as well, and then got unusable when the screen with increasing regularity got polluted with ghost images of previous screen frames. It's a physical hardware problem since screen captures do not show any image corruption. I had to send the unit back to Microsoft and they mailed me a replacement unit.

Now, it seems like the same dead horizontal lines are appearing for this second unit of mine. I wonder how long before the ghosting problem occurs again.

EDIT

Well, guess what. Ghosting happened shortly after I made this post. SWELL. JUST SWELL.

EDIT

To add more observational information, I suspect the rendering misbehaviour has something to do with heat. Problem's more likely to occur when the top of the SP4 gets hot.
 
Last edited:

elevatorman

New Member
My two cents worth.
My screen shaking too, but have some additional information I haven't seen mentioned.
  • Using dock to use second screen. Primary shakes whether plugged in to dock or not
  • Secondary monitor NEVER shaking
  • Primary, when on Screen Saver, never shakes. Nice steady screen on screen saver. Minute keyboard is touched and screen saver shuts off, there's the jittery desktop
 
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