Can't use recovery USB to reset Surface Pro 4

[Stanleywinston]

Has anyone has this issue...I decided after the last insider preview to do a recovery and start afresh on my surface. Doing a recovery failed so I followed what I thought would be the simplest approach and downloaded the surface pro 4 recovery files from MS and copied them over the top of a recovery USB created from a standard windows 10 machine (this seemed to be how MS say to do it).
Trouble is that I can boot from that USB and go through the motions of a recovery but it always failed at 57%, again nothing helpful, just 'recovery has failed no changes have been made' (although changes have been made because the SSD is wiped).
I have found that I can download the windows 10 iso from MS and just boot and install from that. that seems to be ok but it's not surface OEM so some thing behave oddly (it makes the plugging in and unplugging sound when I close the keyboard for instance)

I thought I remembered something about restrictions on what version could be recovered to but I can't find information on that now or workarounds. Any clues?

 

[T Moore]

Doing a recovery failed so I followed what I thought would be the simplest approach and downloaded the surface pro 4 recovery files from MS and copied them over the top of a recovery USB created from a standard windows 10 machine (this seemed to be how MS say to do it).

Don't think you copy over anything. It goes on a empty formatted USB. REad the instructions again.
https://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/17/how-to-download-and-install-a-recovery-image-for-your-microsoft-surface-device/

 

[Stanleywinston]

hmmm. interesting. that guide skips the bit that is on the MS page that it refers to. On the MS site it tells you to create a recovery from a working machine and then copy the unzipped image over it. I'll try it this way

 

[Stanleywinston]

that is incredible... The instructions on the MS surface support site (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surfacerecoveryimage) include this:
7. Go back to the recovery image .zip file that you downloaded and open it.
8. Drag the files from the recovery image folder to the USB recovery drive you created. Then choose to replace the files in the destination.

Those two extra steps make the process take 30 minutes and fail. Take those steps out and the restore takes 10 minutes and works!

Thanks for your help

 

[travis_valkyrie]

The whole step process is to format the USB drive to a bootable file system and have boot files copied over it without the existing system files copied over from the existing machine. So steps 7 and 8 are meant to be your system files for a full factory restore.

I assume it takes forever for you and fails as it could be that you were extracting the files directly from the zip folder to the USB drive. It would be easier to extract the files first on your hard drive then copy them over to the USB, this way Windows won't have to access a temp location to extract and move the files to the USB, it's just too resource intensive and could possibly result in a failure.

I suggest redoing this again as it sound like you've gotten a generic Windows installation. A proper restore would have the right drivers already installed and correct settings optimized for the surface tablet. (eg. Pen setup and settings for type cover).

Source: I have just done this yesterday as I've recently bought a SP3.