Can't boot into windows

fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
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As the title says, I have an extremely odd issue. I recently purchased a brand new microsoft surface 2017. Not that it matters, but it's the i5 model, 4gb of ram and 128gb of ssd storage space. After purchasing it, I used it for about 8 hours. All went well. I then did all the windows updates, all worked well. There were a few more windows updates that I did and then I shut it down for the night.

When I started the surface, it started to boot and then did a blue screen of death (bsod). I tried rebooting again, hard rebooting etc, nothing will get it back into windows.

After messing with it for a few hours, it randomly booted into windows on an attempt. It stayed in windows for about 15 seconds before giving a bsod. This has happened about 15 times, but 9 out of 10 attempts (if not more) it will not get into windows and it will bsod before that.

So, I downloaded the recovery tool, tossed it onto a flash drive. Made sure it booted from my desktop. Tossed it onto the surface, booted from it and boom another bsod. As soon as it reaches the flash drive it will bsod.

I can get into the bios and change whatever I would like, boot order, secure boot, etc. I have stayed in the bios for an hour with no issues. Everything works, touch screen, keyboard etc. I just can't get into windows at all.

Am I over looking something easy? I tried volume down and power to force it into booting from the usb drive but no luck. I also tried my windows 10 drive that I used to install windows on this pc and my wifes pc, no luck.

I really don't want to go to a microsoft store if this is something I can fix, let me know if you have any tips.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Brand-new? Take it to an MS Store if you have one around you, and see what they can do for you. They should be able to, at the very least, re-image it, and if it BSODs for "the professionals" during that process, then I think odds are good that you could get a replacement unit out of them, especially if it's a recent purchase and you have the receipt. (I don't know if you had to buy it at an MS Store to get this level of service, however.)
 

fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,335
70
91
I don't have a microsoft store even remotely close to me unfortunately, otherwise that would be my first option currently. I bought it brand new sealed in the box. It is still under warranty via microsoft, so I could mail it to them and have them fix it. I'm just hoping someone has a tip / suggestion that I can try to fix it before mailing it off to them. I've heard through the grape vines that anytime someone mails in a new surface to them, they send back a refurbished unit. The last thing I want to do is get back a used unit (granted it would at least work). I'm currently trying a different version of the windows recovery image.

One odd thing though, the recovery image from the microsoft website for the surface, is in a .zip. It's just a bunch of files. I thought recovery images were supposed to be ISO's, especially for flash drives. Maybe I am wrong though.
 

fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,335
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Check out the first reply here. Make a bootable flash drive with the media creation tool and get into that command prompt to give it a shot.

As I was saying above, I can't get it to read the usb. It will act like it will be reading it and then it will blue screen. I've tried the windows media creation tool, a windows flash drive, a surface recovery image and something else that I won't mention here. So moral of the story, I've tried every possible way to get a windows bootable usb to work and it simply won't boot from either drive. One being 16gb and one being 256gb's.
 

bbhaag

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2011
6,606
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Is there anyway you can return it to the store you purchased it from and get a replacement? Sounds like maybe you got a "bad egg" from the factory and while unusual it does happen. Where did you buy it from and what it their return policy?
 

fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,335
70
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I contacted microsoft and they said I can either ship it to them (which I don't want to do), or I can drive the 3 hours to the closest store. So I decided as a last ditch effort to grab another flash drive and toss windows on it. Just to see if MAYBE it would work. Unfortunately it didn't work. So...I had one more bright idea. Figured I would toss a linux distro on it and see if I could get it to boot into that. After some messing around, I finally got it to boot into linux mint. I'm currently installing linux mint to the hard drive now, so hopefully I will be able to get into it, toss the flash drive in and figure out how to install windows while inside linux. Or maybe the windows flash drive willl work properly after linux is installed, I don't know. I'm happy to see that it's on and working currently, but I really really need to get windows installed lol.

Worst case scenario, I've got an appointment setup Saturday at the microsoft store.
 

fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,335
70
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I agree, but a 6 hour drive round trip isn't fun. Especially when I just got back from a long trip. I've got it so I can boot into Linux Mint both from the flash drive and the nvme drive itself. But I still can't get windows installed =/
 

fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,335
70
91
You can't run executables in linux. Yes linux works from a usb, but windows 10 will not. Surfaces are sealed units, so you can't remove the nvme drive. Think of it as a tablet essentially, just much faster with an i5 processor and a 128gb nvme storage drive. I can't get into safe mode, especially since there is no copy of windows on it anymore. Only thing that will run is linux off a usb, or linux from the hard drive. I can't get windows to install regardless of what I try. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. I'm gonna bash my head against the wall messing with it until Saturday when I take it in lol.
 

fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,335
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Can't you send through mail or UPS?

Ya they gave me the option of mailing it. Only problem with that is since its a 1000 dollar machine, I would have to get 1000 dollars of insurance on it. So it's going to be about the same price, if not cheaper, just to drive the 3 hours to the store and the 3 hours back. Plus if I go to the store, it gets done the same day. I would rather have it done that day, instead of having to wait like 2 weeks with shipping and all that stuff. I might play around with it more tomorrow, but so far no luck.

I got Linux Mint installed on the nvme drive though, so I know the drive works and the usb port works obviously. Just no matter what I do, I can't get a windows usb drive to boot. I've tested a bunch of usb's and they work on all the desktops just fine. Even the surface recovery image works on my desktops. It just doesn't work on the surface.