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
    2017-08-04T00:30:35+00:00

    Hi James, thank you for your suggestions but I can assure that BIOS is setted in the right way in order to make USB booting. Anyway powering on with volume key (-) down or also setting in the BIOS to boot only from USB doesn't function! It is as the Surface Pro 4 i5 doesn't read the boot sector of the USB stick and in this way skip to load the installation setup.

    Regards. Luca

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-08-04T00:29:41+00:00

    Also, make sure that there is no micro-SD card in the slot and you may also need to detach the keyboard.  Micro-SD cards can "confuse" the system when booting up and the keyboard has been know to interfere.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-08-04T00:21:15+00:00

    If Fedora did not boot, then either you had changed the BIOS in some fashion or there is a problem elsewhere in the system.

    Fedora boots up "as is" with no changes to the BIOS or UEFI settings.  You can try other Linux distributions but make sure you use the Rufus tool to burn those images onto a USB pendrive.  You cannot just mount the ISO image and copy the files over for it to work.

    Double check your BIOS and make sure it is set to factory defaults.  There is a possibility that the factory may have made some changes.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-08-04T00:00:17+00:00

    it doesn't change the story

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