Dead Zone - it's all good.

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Dead Zone Fixed!

We bought a Surface Pro 3 a few years back when it was new. After about 13 months – right after the warranty expired – a dead zone developed on the touch screen in which touch by hand or pen/stylus would not function. This was the approximately top 1/3 of the screen. After much searching and gnashing of teeth, I was unable to find a fix.

Recently, I was resetting the device to factory defaults (fresh OS install, all updates, etc. After successfully troubleshooting an issue with the WiFi adapter disappearing after one of the updates, only to re-appear after updating some chipset drivers manually, I was feeling lucky so I looked into the dead zone again since it still persisted even after the fresh install, etc.

It turns out that Sony made the touch display for the Surface Pro 3. After downloading and running Sony’s Touch Screen Calibration Tool, the dead zone lives again! We now have full functionality of the touch screen as it was originally designed. You can find the tool here: https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/downloads/W0009338

It says that it is for Windows 8, but it worked fine on my fully patched Windows 10 Professional Surface Pro 3 as of July, 2020. Please don’t just download and run. Read the instructions on the download page in the provided link.


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Comments

6 responses to “Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Dead Zone Fixed!”

  1. Oscar Avatar
    Oscar

    Thanks man, works perfectly now! I was going to take my surface to a repair store.

    1. Jerry Gartner Avatar
      Jerry Gartner

      Happy to save you time and money!

  2. lulu Avatar
    lulu

    Hi,
    Can you share the calibration program ? Sony removed the download link because Windows 8 isn’t supported anymore… Like 2 weeks ago 🙁

    1. Jerry Gartner Avatar
      Jerry Gartner

      I’ll have a look and repost.

  3. Ceafin Avatar
    Ceafin

    Broken link! Or rather Sony doesn’t offer it anymore? Any chance the program/app/driver is still around somewhere?

    1. Jerry Gartner Avatar
      Jerry Gartner

      I’ll have a look.

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