Surface Pro 4 issues with both Linux and WinPE bootable USB

David:

A couple of simple things to check - for the Surface line of PCs to boot from a USB flash drive, the drive must be 32 GB or smaller and it must be formatted FAT32.

Mark Wharton wrote:

David:

A couple of simple things to check - for the Surface line of PCs to boot from a USB flash drive, the drive must be 32 GB or smaller and it must be formatted FAT32.

Thanks Mark, but check and check.  16 GB, formatted FAT32.

UPDATE:

I just tried the latest (v9.9) ATI PE Builder (see the first sticky in this Acronis True Image 2017 Forum)  What an amazing effort and gift to the community by MVP's.Bobbo_3CDX1 and Mustang!!!

As an old BartPE guy, I couln't believe how automated the builder these guys put together is.  At the end of the process, it failed to make the bootable USB directly, but using Rufus (free download) and pointing it to the Amd64.ISO file, I finally make a USB that works!!

Like many others, I can't thank you guys enough!

David, 

Glad to hear it - wanted to make something useful and friendly and am appreciative to hear it is workign out.

Any specific errors when it tried to create the bootable USB directly?  I haven't seen it fail to do this and am curious if it built it and it wasn't bootable, or just wouldn't build the USB drive at all?

David,

When you attempted to create the WinPE using the MVP tool was the target thumb drive freshly formatted or did it have data on it from a previous attempt to build a boot drive?

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:

David, 

Glad to hear it - wanted to make something useful and friendly and am appreciative to hear it is workign out.

Any specific errors when it tried to create the bootable USB directly?  I haven't seen it fail to do this and am curious if it built it and it wasn't bootable, or just wouldn't build the USB drive at all?

The .wim and .iso files were built successfully, so I knew I was probably going to be all right.  But when I opted to have the USB made, it went through most of the routine, but somewhere in the "copying files" process it stopped, announced failure and threw an error code.  I just tried it again so that I could give you the error code, but this time it simply stalled during the 'copying files" to the USB step.

Enchantech wrote:

David,

When you attempted to create the WinPE using the MVP tool was the target thumb drive freshly formatted or did it have data on it from a previous attempt to build a boot drive?

It may indeed have had data.  I was making a lot of attempts, and sometimes I formatted the USB stick with Windows and sometimes I relied on the creation process to do it.

By the way, I saw in the builder's header this morning that you were a contributer to the project.  Thanks!!

UPDATE 2:

In fairness to the Acronis folks, and to help other readers, I should report that when I used the Acronis media builder to output an ISO, and then used Rufus (free download) to make the bootable USB with that ISO, it succeeded.  However, I prefer the MVPs' PE implementation with the goodied added.

Thanks David,  we'll have a look into that.  I am not sure what we are relying on to format the device.  In some cases with some drives that have been used before Windows Quick format is not enough and bootablity fails.  The long format does seem to always work as do third party tools like Rufus and my favorite RMprepUSB.

The MVP tool is using a Microsoft utility that comes with the ADK. It is called MakeWinPEMedia. The utility has the formatting function built into it. It uses the quick format method. Maybe there was something corrupt on the USB drive you used. Try doing a full FAT32 format on the drive in Windows and then build again using the MVP tool.

Just an FYI as well. If you have a working WinPE flash drive, you can usually just swap out the boot.wim file. The MVP tool saves it with a different name so just copy it where boot.wim should go (sources folder on the root of the flash drive) and rename it to boot.wim

I looked through the thread and did not find a reference to the necessary drivers for the Surface Pro 4. Microsoft made it easy to download them all in a single zip file: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49498. Mark only the option SurfacePro4_Win10_15063_1701601_0.zip for download when asked, download and unzip it into the drivers folders for the MVP WinPE builder.

If you have upgraded to Creators already or are going to upgrade, use the downloaded files for the WinPE creation only. If you have upgraded to Windows Creators update, or plan to upgrade when it becomes publicly available, the correct version of the drivers for installation starts with SurfacePro4_Win10_17... in its name.

Regards,

Slava

Thanks Slava!

For the most part, just to see the Surface Pro hard drive for the purpose of backing up or restoring, the only driver needed to be added separately is IRST to handle the RAID mode of the bios.  Windows 10 pretty much as the other drivers for the Surface Pro 4 already - however, some people may want to use the touchscreen or surfacekeyboard which could reguire those additional drivers.  Otherwise, plugging in a USB keyboard/mouse (I use a logitech wireless unifying device which has been working fine with the WinPE and the Linux versions of the recovery media), can be helpful for this particular device.