Replace your Surface screen and battery at home?

DIY, FAQ, repair, Surface  18 Comments

[Updated 2023/07/26: updated official MS store screen/battery purchase links]

[Looking for the touch screen disable script? Scroll to the bottom]

  1. Why repair your Surface at home?
  2. Before you do anything!
  3. Recommended Tools and materials for DIY home repairs:
  4. Screen/Digitizer replacement parts
    1. Surface series screen/digitizer assemblies:
    2. Surface Pro series screen/digitizer assemblies:
    3. Surface Book series screen/digitizer assemblies:
    4. Surface Laptop series screen/digitizer assemblies:
    5. Surface Studio screen
  5. Internal Batteries
    1. Surface Series
    2. Surface Pro Series
    3. Surface Book Series
    4. Laptop Series
  6. Repair Guides
    1. MS official service guides for select models
    2. Screen replacement
    3. Tablet Battery removal/replacement
    4. Keyboard Base battery replacement
    5. General repair notes
  7. Disable touch scripts
  8. References

Why repair your Surface at home?

Microsoft only repairs your exact machine for some models – for many models they simply swap devices with a previously refurbished unit which means you’ll have the hassle of re-installing all your software from scratch. The condition of the device you get from Microsoft will be restored to “like new”. You will likely get a fresh battery or one with fewer than 20 charge cycles on it along with a scratch-free screen. The chassis may have signs of wear. You may get a free device upgrade such as being upgraded from a Pro 5 to a Pro 6 a Core i3 to Core i5 CPU depending on the refurbished stock on hand. But upgrades are unlikely so don’t bet on it. After ~5 years, devices are usually removed from the device repair list so you’re on your own after that. There are exceptions for enterprises that purchases devices in bulk but you need to talk to your sales rep to get specifics.

Out-of-warranty costs are flat rate:

Surface
Series		ModelsSizeBattery service
available?		Pricing
($ USD)
Go1no[$299]
2yes[$210-$299]
3yes[$250-$299]
DuoDuoyes[$299-$649]
Duo 2yes[$669-$699]
Laptop213.5″no[$450]
3/413.5″yes[$300-$550]
3/415″yes[$340-$610]
513.5″yes[$385-$550]
515″yes[$385-$610]
Go / Go 2yes[$220-$399]
Studioyes[$649-$749]
Pro5/6no[$499]
7yes[$280-$499]
7+yes[$370-$499]
8/Xyes[$330-$550]
9yes[$400-$550]
Book2/313.5″yes for Book 3[$599]
2/315″yes for Book 3[$649]
Studio2/2+n/a[$1800]

Before you do anything!

  • If a small crack develops on your screen, cover that area with scotch-tape immediately to reduce the likelihood of the crack propagating and cutting your finger. Consider getting an adhesive screen protector as this may delay the crack propagating for a year or more. If the screen or digitizer is unusable, the whole LCD/digitizer assembly for various Surface models is replaceable at home and readily available from various Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress sellers.
  • 3rd-party services that repair iPads and cell phones can probably repair your Surface, but they will charge a premium compared to more popular devices with easier repair techniques.
  • If you are patient and willing to learn new skills, a DIY repair may be the right choice as you can easily save hundreds of dollars compared to a professional repair.

Screen/Digitizer replacement parts

Affiliate links are provided for parts that are available at retail. Links for newer parts will be added when they become available. If items are out of stock or have bumped up in price, check aliexpress.com, ebay.com and amazon.com

Surface series screen/digitizer assemblies:

Surface Pro series screen/digitizer assemblies:

Surface Book series screen/digitizer assemblies:

Surface Laptop series screen/digitizer assemblies:

Surface Studio screen

Internal Batteries

Affiliate links are provided for parts that are available at retail. Links for newer parts will be added when they become available. If items are out of stock, check aliexpress.com, ebay.com and amazon.com

Surface Series

Surface Pro Series

Surface Book Series

Laptop Series

Repair Guides

Check ifixit.com for teardowns and Youtube for video tutorials,

MS official service guides for select models

Screen replacement

Tablet Battery removal/replacement

Keyboard Base battery replacement

Hinge/kickstand replacement/repair

General repair notes

  • The repair process is not difficult, just very tedious. I did it in 2 hours with zero experience/training, but can easily be done quicker.
  • If you purchase your screen replacement from Amazon, Amazon has a network of contractors that may be able to do the screen swap for a reasonable price.
    • Given that Surface is a specialty brand, it would be best to contact local contractors directly to understand their level of expertise.
    • http://www.cellphonerepair.com is a good resource in the USA
  • One change to the process shown in the videos above I would recommend is covering the perimeter of the screen with blue painters tape – that way any shards of glass that pop free stick to the tape. Makes removal a lot easier.
  • Once the new screen is in place, it can help to cure the adhesive by running the hairdryer around the perimeter of the screen and then compressing the screen into the chassis by resting a few large textbooks on top for about an hour. This will allow the adhesive to melt a bit and get into all the little crannies and prevent the screen from dislodging later on.
  • While you’re in there, you can upgrade the SSD
  • 3rd-party screens may not be color calibrated to the same quality as MS OEM screens. You can correct this by installing the intel.com drivers and customizing the color profile. Our replacement screen required dialing down greens by 10% to match the OEM screen.
  • 3rd-party batteries for older Surface models probably won’t last as long as the original battery. The reason is that many batteries are “new old stock”. They are unused, but may have been sitting on a shelf for a long time. Li-ion packs do degrade somewhat even when unused. I bought a new battery pack in 2021 that had a manufacturing date of 2015 – it works fine, but I don’t expect it to last 5 years like the original battery.

Disable touch scripts

Sometimes, a cracked screen or even a screen with invisible micro-fractures in the digitizer layer will register random touch events rendering the device almost useless. Some systems with this symptom are unable to boot into Windows until the broken screen is replaced – even disconnecting the screen and connecting an external monitor may not work. For systems that can boot into Windows, there are two options to workaround this issue.

  1. Instruct Windows to ignore touch input (preserves pen digitizer functionality):
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
;Disable touch screen - dancharblog
;
; -----Instructions: -----
;- copy this text into notepad
;- save as touch.reg
;- double-click the file and follow the prompts to import changes
;- reboot
;
;- Note: to re-enable touch, just change "00000000" to "00000001" and re-run the script
; ------------------------
;
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Wisp\Touch]
"TouchGate"=dword:00000000

2. Another approach is to disable the device drivers responsible for processing touch/pen. You can do this manually via Device manager or via Powershell commands. This approach is especially helpful since it doesn’t require a reboot. You can simply create a link to a script so that you can double-click to disable and double-click to re-enable as needed.

For an almost unusable machine exhibiting phantom touch you can use the following technique to get it working:

  • If remote desktop is allowed on the problem computer, remote into it and run the below Powershell script. If not, from a working computer, save the below PowerShell script as “a.ps1” onto a USB thumb drive
  • Connect a USB hub to your broken Surface
  • Connect a wired mouse and the USB thumb drive to the USB hub
  • Login to windows – this is he hardest part since you’ll need to type in a password while the touch screen goes haywire
  • Once logged in, quickly press windows-key+R to open the run dialog-prompt. Keep trying over and over.
  • When given the chance, type D:\a.ps1 or similar to run the script directly from the- an administrator permissions prompt may pop up that you have to click OK to. Again, you may need to try this over and over again since the random touch events will mess with everything. Once the script runs, touch will be switched off.
  • Todo: add reference to autorun.inf script so that the script runs when you plug in the USB thumbdrive

Device disable script:

#Disable Surface Touch Screen and pen Digitizer Script v3- https://dancharblog.wordpress.com
# Instructions: save as a.ps1 and run it.
# Change "Disable-PnPDevice" to "Enable-PNPDevice" to re-enable.
#
#auto-elevate to admin privileges
Write-Host "Requesting administrator rights"
$myWindowsID = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()
$myWindowsPrincipal = new-object System.Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal($myWindowsID)
$adminRole = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]::Administrator
If ($myWindowsPrincipal.IsInRole($adminRole)) {
    $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = $myInvocation.MyCommand.Definition + "(Elevated)"
} Else {
    $newProcess = new-object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo "PowerShell"
    $newProcess.Arguments = $myInvocation.MyCommand.Definition
    $newProcess.Verb = "runas"
    [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($newProcess)
    exit
}
Write-Host "Attempting to disable n-Trig touchscreen/digitizer..."

# 0. disable all HID-Compliant Touch screen devices - this is probably all you need
(Get-PnpDevice -FriendlyName "*Touch Screen*").InstanceId | ForEach-Object { Disable-PnpDevice -InstanceId $_ -confirm:$false -verbose }

# 1. disable all remaining Surface digitizer related devices
(Get-PnpDevice -FriendlyName ("*Digitizer*","*pen*","*Surface*Touch*").InstanceId | ForEach-Object { Disable-PnpDevice -InstanceId $_ -confirm:$false -verbose }

# 2. disable all n-trig related devices (may be needed for specific Surface models)
(Get-PnpDevice -InstanceID 'HID\NTRG*').InstanceId | ForEach-Object { Disable-PnpDevice -InstanceId $_ -confirm:$false -verbose }

cmd /c pause

References

danchar

18 thoughts on “Replace your Surface screen and battery at home?”

  1. Thanks very much for your page – very helpful. I have a question about replacement displays and prices.

    My Surface Book (powerbase model) has developed yellow discolouration around the edges, so I’m going to replace it. I got inside no problem, but I’m not sure about what to replace the display with.

    There’s quite a lot of variation in price – some cost just over $100, but screens claiming to be genuine Microsoft displays are just over $200. Do you know anything about what kind of quality I can get trying to save a few bucks? Is it just a bit of a colour profile adjustment or should I invest a little more?

    Like

    Reply

    • Hi Ardyn, I don’t know if the $200 units are any better than the $100 units. I expect none of them are actually color calibrated OEM MS screens that passed MS testing.

      Like

      Reply

  3. By, just shattered my SP7 screen so I was looking around for infos and I stumbled in your site. Looking at the upper central bezel of the SP6 and 7 I think they are different models. The six series is missing a microphone hole and the infrared port for Windows Hello camera is different.

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  4. thanks for putting together this great summary!

    one comment: you list the 7 and 7+ screen together, but Microsoft Mechanics’ video mentions a slimmer screen in the 7+ in order to accommodate a larger battery. This implies that it is actually a different screen part.

    See Youtube video at minute 4:50

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. I’m glad I found this site! I picked up a surface pro 4 ($190) from craigslist that had flickergate issues. Found a battery that someone never installed for $30.
    Now All I need is to find a deal on the display. I have a spare 500gb ssd, I should probably clone the old drive to it while I have the SP4 pulled apart.
    Wish me luck!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. Thanks for assembling all this information. Really helpful. Thank you!
    I’m replacing a damaged screen in a surface book 1 but would like to know what adhesive I need to use to reattach the Touch Screen Connector board E49068.
    Do you happen to know what was used originally/should be used to reattach the board?
    many thanks!
    Andrew

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    Reply

      • Thank you for the reg workaround for this; the Surface Laptop Studio has the Intel Precise Tough and Stylus driver for the touchscreen and you can’t disable it without losing pen controls. The reg key edit worked like a charm.

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        Reply

  7. Hi, thank you very much for this blog. The information on it was very helpful for my battery replacement. I had to do a screen replacement, because I accidentally cracked the screen during disassembly. I bought the replacement screen that you linked up above, and now touch and pen input aren’t registering correctly. I wanted to ask whether you had any tips for fixes or something I might’ve done wrong.

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    Reply

  8. How can I get the right Screen replacement for Surface Pro 7 plus considering the screen thickness is different from Surface Pro 7.

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    Reply

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