Screen Hardware Failure/Anomaly?

[Nitemare]

I updated to the latest Intel drivers over the weekend and was playing a few games at work (BF4, BFBC2, CS:GO) and browsing the web. I typically do this on the built in display, but I used a DP>HDMI>DVI converter on a 1600x1050 monitor. I also use a BT keyboard, a USB hub with a portable HDD and mouse, and had the device on the charger with a speaker cable plugged in. It was working fine and dandy.

Well, yesterday I noticed some green lines/dots on my display at certain times... they shadowed the Surface logo and spinning dots at boot, desktop icons, and would appear on my wallpaper, tiles, and UI in certain instances, always in the same spot and flickering. It looked to me like a sign of hardware failure.

I un-installed the drivers, put MS ones back on, and tried Intel's again, and different resolutions. I also tried hooking up my TV with HDMI and seeing if it had the same problem while on duplicate - it didn't. Called MS Support, and they recommended a refresh. Before attempting the refresh, the rep put me on hold, so I booted up BFBC2 by on my SP2 by itself with just the keyboard. I noticed zero issues in game, so I alt-tabbed to the desktop. The lines were gone. Rebooted, shut down, and turned back on. Still no signs of the issue.

This blows my mind. How did running a demanding game for all of 2 minutes fix the issue? The rep thinks the setup I was running before with all of the display conversions caused the problem, but it just doesn't make sense to me considering it had been rebooted, plugged into other devices, and drivers changed. It was almost like the GPU was "stuck" somewhere (clock speed, voltage, memory maybe), and the demand from the game tripped itself back to normal. I could be completely wrong, and it doesn't make sense to me how this fixed it, but it did.

Here are some pictures showing what I was describing... sorry for the large pictures, but it helps show the issues.

Hovering mouse/pen input below scroll bars


Side by side with TV


Icons


Boot


Icons/wallpaper

 

[Nitemare]

Anybody?

My device has started doing this again in much the same way. I tried making it disappear through running a game again, but this did not work. It made the issue less pronounced after a couple of minutes, but it is still there.

I don't want to bother with a reset/refresh if this looks like it'd be a temporary fix. Really looks like a hardware issue to me since the artifacts are inconsistent to a degree and come/go.

 

[reach]

what do you mean with no reset? Did you try one? Did you try the Vol-up + Pwr on? If it fixes the issue it has to be a software/firmware thing.
Did you try to revert to the old driver?

 

[jollywombat]

Check the UEFI bios screens to see if you have the issue there as well as that is hardware level without a driver in the way. If you dont have the issue there, can also try booting something like a UBUNTU live USB Distro or even a windows recovery USB and see if the issue exists there. If you dont see it, its an issue with the drivers in windows

 

[reach]

I just saw that you also have it on the POST screen. That's pretty bad, I can't imagine that any driver issue could mess up POST. I'd definitely return it!
Jollywombat's answer is almost the same, BIOS, POST, no big difference.

 

[Rvacha]

Usually when PCs boot they use a generic VGA driver - perhaps the entire install is hosed?

 

[Nitemare]

I went into BIOS this morning and it was doing it there as well. I waited about 5 minutes and the issue went away again. I've gone ahead and started the process to get a replacement. Definitely not something I want to deal with, and maybe I'll get lucky and receive one of the newer CPU models.

 

[be77solo]

Good call, appears to be hardware related to me.

 

[jollywombat]

I just saw that you also have it on the POST screen. That's pretty bad, I can't imagine that any driver issue could mess up POST. I'd definitely return it!
Jollywombat's answer is almost the same, BIOS, POST, no big difference.

With full UEFI compliance, the video driver is loaded immediately upon exiting the bios, so the "Surface" logo you see then is already in the boot phase with the video driver active. In the bios screen itself it is not however.

 

[jollywombat]

I went into BIOS this morning and it was doing it there as well. I waited about 5 minutes and the issue went away again. I've gone ahead and started the process to get a replacement. Definitely not something I want to deal with, and maybe I'll get lucky and receive one of the newer CPU models.

Good luck! Sorry to hear about the issues, never fun

 

[drolem]

Are those pictures from an external monitor, or from the Surface's built in LCD?

 

[jollywombat]

The surface, you can see in one of the pictures the digitizer pen next to the screen and it detecting and placing the cursor for the pen.