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Running into screen flicker woes with your new Surface Book or Surface Pro 4? Microsoft’s latest patch should fix the problem.
Some owners of the new Surface devices had been complaining that their screens would flicker. Even those who installed the latest updates, including Microsoft’s October firmware update, said they were seeing the problem. Now the company says it has fixed the persistent glitch.
Bugs are not untypical for new products. Companies can spend months testing a new device in-house, but certain problems won’t pop up until that device is in the hands of thousands or millions of users. The Surface Book laptop and Surface Pro 4 tablet were both released October 26, giving new owners a week to discover problems that Microsoft didn’t catch.
The description for the November firmware update released Monday for both the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 states: “HD Graphics 520 driver update (v20.19.15.4308) addresses some display issues, including some scenarios that result in screen flickering.”
The November fixes for the Surface Book also include updates for the audio driver, the keyboard and trackpad, and the system’s overall stability, as well as support for the Surface Pen for future versions of Windows 10. The fixes for the Surface Pro 4 are the same, minus the update for the keyboard and trackpad.
If you own the Surface Book or Surface Pro 4, you may still need to wait a bit to get the November update.
“When Surface updates are provided via the Windows Update service, they are delivered in stages to Surface customers,” Microsoft said on its update pages. “As a result, not every Surface will receive the update at the same time, but the update will be delivered to all devices. If you have not received the update then please manually check Windows Update later.”
Microsoft did not respond to CNET’s request for comment.
