Surface Pro 4 won't boot to USB

Anonymous
2016-07-10T08:39:13+00:00

I have tried every instruction method I have found online to get the surface to boot from USB.

The only requirement I have seen is the USB is formatted fat32 with I have verified.  

It was made with the recovery disk creator. 

Juat at can't get it to boot to it.

Surface | Surface Pro | Install and update

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Anonymous
2016-07-11T00:30:30+00:00

If you are trying to boot to the recovery usb flash drive using the 2 button power + volume down power up that may be your problem.  That procedure does not work on my sp4 i7 and may not work on any sp4s.

 Method to boot to Recovery usb

Make sure your sp4 is shutdown, insert your usb flash drive, then hold down the Volume UP button and tap the power button momentarily, as soon as the SURFACE logo appears release the Volume UP button.  This will bring you to the UEFI configuration screens.  Go to the Boot configuration screen and make sure the "Enable boot from usb devices" is checked and that USB Storage is selected(the box will be blackened if it is selected).  To boot the usb swipe your finger from the right to left on the "USB Storage" line.  Answer the following message to boot from that device and your sp4 should boot to recovery drive.  Your usb stick should be formatted as fat32 and the recovery image should be unzipped in  its entirety to the usb stick.  Rufus is not necessary if you formatted your flash drive on the sp4.

Note that I have used both 32gb and 16gb flash drives successfully. You do not have to disable Secure Boot.

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-07-19T19:45:36+00:00

    I had to disable Secure Boot. Tried everything else as people said I didn't, but it just wouldn't boot off USB.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-05-12T07:40:05+00:00

    I had the same issue. I couldn't get the device booting for an MDT deployment at a customer. The customer only had non branded USB 2.0 sticks available for me. Whataver posible I had done but nothing is working.

    So I took some of my own sticks, ruffused it (GPT Fat 32 and LiteTouch64.iso file) and working instant. This stick is a SanDisk 32Gb USB 3 stick. Cloned that stick to the USB 2.0 stick but still nog working.

    My conclusion is that the Surface Book and Surface Pro are realy picky on what kind of USB stick it will accept.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-03-27T15:36:28+00:00

    Sounds great.  Should have thought about rebooting after setting up the drive, but didn't think of it.

    By the way!  It could be the keyboard that was the problem with doing the recovery beforehand.  The keyboards have been known to cause issues to include with Windows Updates as well.

    Also, a micro-SD card in the slot can "confuse" the recovery process as well.

    Keep that Linux USB pen drive in your toolkit for future use in case this happens again.

    If you had continued using Linux on the tablet, WiFi/Bluetooth, touchscreen, and the pen all work and work very well in Fedora 25 or higher.  The keyboard driver was left out since it is still under development (touchpad works but not the keys).  You can scale up the fonts, icons, and enlarge the menu/task bars to make it a bit more functional.  It worked really good for 24 hours when I tested it but web browsing with Firefox was a bit sluggish at times.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-03-27T14:14:17+00:00

    I forgot one additional note about Fedora during installation:

    When the disk management profile appears during installation, you need to wipe out all partitions (delete them) and reclaim space.

    After that, tell it to use the entire hard disk (SSD card in this case) and it will create its own partition scheme.

    Later, when you re-install Windows 10 back onto the machine, Windows will wipe out all partitions and re-create the original drive scheme.

    This worked.  Up to the point that I was able to delete the partitions.  After that  I didn't care.  I did the full reset pc/erase everything twice.  Then I deleted the partitions.  Back to the factory.  And you weren't joking about needing a magnifying glass!  Adding insult to injury I've got the shaking/ghosting display even in the UEFI.  Thanks for the help.  This is a good thread to bookmark should I ever run into this again.

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