Solved need help - Win10 broke my SP3 again

[RémiM]

Well,

my honey moon is over. Build 10047 broke my heart and my SP3.

I am not even able to start from a recovery USB, and windows says unable to recover settings.

I cant roll over to a previous version either.

Win10 10047 keeps asking to enter my product key.

Any help to reset completely my SP3 would be great.

Thanks guys.

 

[malberttoo]

I don't think I'll be any help. but when I first went to 10, it lasted about 20 minutes before I had to return to 8.1. Trying to do it though, had nothing but problems, couldn't boot from the USB, something else about a signature invalid or something. Anyways on a (desperate) hunch, I replaced my USB drive and the 8.1 re-install went smoothly after that.

 

[Gavin Lewarne]

the SP3 is stupidly finicky about what flash drives it will successfully boot from. There is a slim chance that your USB recovery image is corrupted (i had that) so start afresh and download the factory recovery image from microsoft support and follow the instructions on getting it onto a USB drive.

 

[RémiM]

the SP3 is stupidly finicky about what flash drives it will successfully boot from. There is a slim chance that your USB recovery image is corrupted (i had that) so start afresh and download the factory recovery image from microsoft support and follow the instructions on getting it onto a USB drive.

Well, I plug my recovery USB in (USB that I already used once) with all the files on, and when I chose recovery, it says it cant recovery, and when I want to boot on the USB, it doesnt boot.

 

[GreyFox7]

Well, I plug my recovery USB in (USB that I already used once) with all the files on, and when I chose recovery, it says it cant recovery, and when I want to boot on the USB, it doesnt boot.

I seem to recall people saying they had to delete their Win10 partition to recover back to 8.1.
I assumed that was not a fluke but a case of it seeing a higher level OS partition and then saying these are not the Recovery Files your looking for. May even need to use the Recreate Partitions option. Just going on what I've seen here, haven't done it myself.

On second thought... it would have to boot the USB to delete the partition... perhaps a Two Button Shutdown will help.

I have had this issue with booting the USB but not one that I had used before, I assumed it was just an issue making the USB. It does seem unduly finicky on this point. The issue I kept having was error: 0xC000000F \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD missing or corrupt (something like that I didn't note the whole message just the number and file).

 

[jnjroach]

What is your Bitlocker Status?

 

[RémiM]

What is your Bitlocker Status?

How to check it ?

I am afraid now because the refreshed Win10 is asking for my Windows activation key.

There is a bunch of things going wrong.

 

[jnjroach]

How to check it ?

I am afraid now because the refreshed Win10 is asking for my Windows activation key.

There is a bunch of things going wrong.

Are you able to get the desktop? You can check Bitlocker from there. Also have you made changes to the SecureBoot in UEFI?

Worse case scenario, download the recovery image from Surface Support and create the Recovery Drive. Use the Volume Rocker Down while powering up to activate the Legacy USB Support or if possible you can use the Advanced Startup option from Update and Recovery and chose to boot from the USB Drive.

 

[Hingle McKringleberry]

^-- see above. format your thumb drive using fat32 and use an app like Rufus to install the factory recovery image as a bootable drive. Then volume - and power button boot into the drive. Pick the option to refresh/install windows and not keep any files if it asks.

 

[RémiM]

Are you able to get the desktop

yep sir !

 

[bluegrass]

Do you have build 10047 or build 10041 like I have? I may have missed an upgrade sometime recently.

 

[RémiM]

10047. Updated yesterday. In my case, it was a bad idea. 10041 was rock solid.