PDFS are acting up

Question

I got my surface pro 8 about a year ago to use for schoolwork and it worked fine within this past year. However, lately the PDFs haven’t been working as efficiently.

Sometimes the PDFs will flicker, then everything gets laggy. There is also a big white box in the middle of nearly every page (especially for PDFS of slideshows). These can be fixed with refreshing the page, but they always appear after a bit. If I use the highlighter tool, do another thing, then go back to use the highlighter tool it doesn’t work. The pen tool barely works, I go to write something and it’s sometimes delayed. As I write more stuff, the previous stuff will flicker (writing appears then disappears). The same will happen if I were to erase something, it will still appear when I go to write something else or if I scroll through the pages. Lastly the zoom and scroll for touchscreen is buggy. When I try to zoom in, it doesn’t so I have to use the mouse to manually zoom in or touch the (+) icon. When I scroll with the touchscreen, it zooms in while scrolling.

It was never like this, issues started about 2 weeks ago but were minor so I didn’t pay much attention but now I can barely use it. I write all my notes using PDFs so it’s a very important tool for me.

My laptop is updated to the latest version and is all up to date. I checked some drivers and those were all updated as well. The issues are only present for the PDF function and nothing else.

Answer 1

Hi April!

Thanks for reaching Microsoft Community. We're here to help and let's work on this together.

I understand you're having issues with your Surface device. Happy to help and provide more options here.

To further isolate the issue please allow us to ask a few questions.

• Does this only happen to 1 PDF or does it affect all?
• What version of Windows is your Surface device running?

Most common reason for this issue can be caused by a corrupted or outdated operating system. Please follow suggested troubleshooting steps below:

Run Surface Diagnostics Toolkit and complete task here Fix common Surface problems using the Surface app and Surface Diagnostic Toolkit - Microsoft Support.

Please try to update your drivers and firmware manually, see through this link Download drivers and firmware for Surface - Microsoft Support.

Please let us know how it goes. We look forward to hearing from you.

Greetings,

RodelioP.

Answer 2

Hello, thank you for the response.

It affects all PDFs, and I am running Windows 11, version 22H2.

I ran the diagnostics toolkit and while it showed everything else was running smoothly, it didn't seem to pinpoint or fix the issue. I also followed the link provided to manually update the drivers and firmware, but it still didn't fix the issue unfortunately.

Answer 3

Hi April!

Thanks for getting back to us and apologies for the delayed response as I have been out of office.

May I know how you're accessing these PDF files? Is it through edge or which app? Also, to better understand the issue, could you please send us a screen recording of the issue.

Let's try to uninstall and reinstall drivers on Device Manager and see if it helps. Please follow steps below:

1. Open Device Manager.
2. Under System Devices, expand and right click on Intel Management Engine Interface and select Uninstall.
3. Under Software Devices, expand and right click on Intel iCLS Client and select Uninstall.
4. On top view of Device Manager, go to Action and select scan for hardware changes. That will automatically reinstall the drivers.

After performing steps above, please force your device to shut down and restart. Press and hold power button for 20seconds, wait for the Windows logo to appear. Once it does, you can then release the button and wait for your device to restart.

Let us know how it goes!

Regards,

RodelioP.

Answer 4

Hi April!

We haven't heard from you, so we will consider your issue resolved. If you do need further help, please create a new thread to discuss your concerns through this link: Create a new question (microsoft.com)as we will not be monitoring this thread going forward.

Thank you for understanding.

Regards,

RodelioP.