Surface Pro 8.1 Update 1, Hard Freeze & Now Won't Boot

[F27]

It was the way I ended my pain. I even verified that I had a EFI boot compatible drive by using the latest Ubuntu DVD and making that into a UEFI usb stick which worked but for obvious reasons I didn't want to put that in my SP.

I used my older version of this

http://www.zalman.com/global/product/Product_Read.php?Idx=750

Which basically takes an ISO and makes it into a DVD drive. I was amazed it worked but it was faultless.

Out of interest what program did you use to make the UEFI stick?

The Zalman thing is pretty cool, I guess soon even external DVD drives will be obsolete.

I don't know why they gave the Surface possibly the worst BIOS known to man, nothing is easy to do with it. I have never known trouble like this just to boot an iso! My firmware and bios appears to be working fine (just windows corrupted) yet nothing external will boot... why!

 

[carp969]

I used Rufus and this guide none of them worked.

I've had my Zalman drive for three years and its the best tech item I've brought in Twenty years of working in the IT industry. I was just amazed it worked so well.

 

[F27]

I used Rufus and this guide none of them worked.

I've had my Zalman drive for three years and its the best tech item I've brought in Twenty years of working in the IT industry. I was just amazed it worked so well.

When you said you had a similar issue a few posts up, did your Surface also not boot past the 'SURFACE' loading screen?... just endless loading circles?

 

[Bazzer]

I think the recovery area of the Solid State drive 64GB which is about 7.4GB area is corrupted. This would cause the condition when you do a USB recovery. I had a similar problem but caused because I deleted the area after making the recovery drive. When not their a certain recovery cannot be done. Perhaps yous was corrupt from new.

 

[F27]

Even if the recover partition is damaged it should not stop USB iso booting because that is controlled by the BIOS which is working. You should be able to install a fresh Windows 8.1 from the iso even without the recovery partition.

 

[Bazzer]

So you do have a made USB drive from your Surface? On mine I cannot get it to do a refresh from being powered down and booting from USB drive. (As I know from my frustration of trying to do it) But I can from advanced boot options and selecting USB drive myself.
It then goes off and resets to Windows 8 and takes with updates etc etc about 6 hours to come back to 8.1. I am hopping not to repeat it soon.

 

[F27]

So you do have a made USB drive from your Surface? On mine I cannot get it to do a refresh from being powered down and booting from USB drive. (As I know from my frustration of trying to do it) But I can from advanced boot options and selecting USB drive myself.
It then goes off and resets to Windows 8 and takes with updates etc etc about 6 hours to come back to 8.1. I am hopping not to repeat it soon.

No I have the recovery files from a USB drive made on ANOTHER Surface put on the internet. I don't know how to put those back on a USB.

 

[F27]

I have now found out that you cannot put downloded recovery files onto another USB.

I has to have been created directly from a Surface Pro because it formats the USB in a special way.

Has anyone managed to boot a Windows 8 recovery USB on a Surface created on a normal laptop?

 

[F27]

I'm furious with this now, NOTHING will boot other than Linux stuff.

What kind of device requires the operating system working to fix a broken operating system!

To boot into System Recovery Options or Advanced Startup Options (things you really need when Windows isn't working).... you need to first go into Windows! Do you know how stupid that sounds!