If you’re having trouble with your Surface Pro model, Surface 3, or Surface Book, you may be able to restore or reset it to solve the problem.
Applies to
Surface Studio, Surface Book, Surface Book with Performance Base, Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro 3, Surface 3, Surface Pro 2, Surface Pro.
Download a recovery image for your Surface
If you’re having trouble with the recovery options on your Surface, download the files you need to get your Surface working again.
Create the recovery drive
Important
Creating a recovery drive will erase everything that’s stored on your USB drive. Make sure to move anything you want to keep to another storage device before using your USB to create a recovery drive.
| Step 1: | Connect your USB drive to your Surface (use a USB 3.0 drive if you can). The USB drive should be at least 16 GB. If you have a Surface RT or Surface 2, 8 GB will work. |
| Step 2: | In the search box on the taskbar, type recovery, and then select Create a recovery drive. You might be asked to enter an admin password or confirm your choice. |
| Step 3: | In the User Account Control dialog box, select Yes. |
| Step 4: | Make sure Back up system files to the recovery drive isn’t selected, and then select Next. |
| Step 5: | Select your USB drive, and then select Next > Create. A number of files need to be copied to the recovery drive, so this might take a while. |
| Step 6: | When it’s done, select Finish. |
| Step 7: | Go back to the recovery image .zip file that you downloaded and open it. |
| Step 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. |
| Step 9: | Go to Using a Surface USB recovery drive for important information about how to use your new recovery drive. |