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My Surface Pro 4 pen was working great since I got in about 6 months ago. After starting a session of annotating, the pen began behaving as if the ink was running out. When drawing lines, the pen would stop writing and then start again. Here's an example:

enter image description here

I wasn't able to try another battery, but I re-seated the pen's tip and battery, rebooted and tried many applications, with no difference. Pressing hard seems to help, but not a lot. I cleaned the screen with water, but that didn't change anything. The tip doesn't appear to be damaged.

Erasing works well. Hovering seems to track well. I tried everything else on Microsoft's troubleshooting page. The Surface app changes make no difference.

Fuhrmanator
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3 Answers3

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Although it doesn't look it, my pen's tip is damaged.

I went to a reseller to try out my pen on another Surface 4. I immediately could see a difference in the end of the pen. The plastic around the soft edge was missing.

Googling images of the pen tip revealed the following:

Cracked pen tip

This explains how I got to where I am. Read more on the blog with that image.

In my case, here's what the tip looks like:

Damaged Surface 4 pen (missing casing near tip)

As you can see, the hard black plastic is missing from the outside (it has broken off completely). This seems to be a design flaw in the original tip.

Short-term fix

I used an exacto knife and trimmed off the soft tip of the pen, so that just about 1mm was showing past the hard black plastic. The pen is working well again. However, I'm guessing this problem will return with continued writing because the exterior plastic is too fragile (at least for my writing).

I ordered the Pen Tip Kit (about CAN$25 online) and will see how the other tips fare. Hopefully Microsoft will address this issue.

Community
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Fuhrmanator
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you can also simply turn the tip around, putting the damaged part into the little clip that holds the tip (you can unscrew the point of the pen to get clearer access to this). I did this & now my stylus is working fine again. since the points are so fragile, I guess I should purchase a tip replacement kit for the next time, since I can't keep turning it around ;)

rebecca
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I don´t have spare pen tips so my solution was to pull out the broken tip and insert it with the broken end inside. works like new (even with the tip covered with the black plastic)

user719884
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    While that's a nice answer is it any different from what "rebecca" suggests in his/her answer? – Seth Apr 19 '17 at 08:43