Boot Surface from a USB device

Once your USB drive is set up as a bootable drive with an appropriate operating system on it, you’ll need to set up your Surface to boot from this drive. This requires you to make changes in the UEFI so that the USB drive is the first option:

1. Shut down your Surface.
2. Once Surface has turned off, press and hold the volume-up button.
3. With the volume-up button held down, press and release the power button.
4. Continue holding the volume-up button until the Surface or Windows logo no longer appears on the screen.
5. You should now see the Surface UEFI. Do one of the following:
    
   • Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro (5th Gen), Surface Pro (5th Gen) with LTE Advanced, Surface Pro 6, Surface Book, Surface Book 2, Surface Studio (1st Gen), Surface Studio 2, Surface Laptop (1st Gen), Surface Laptop 2, Surface Go or Surface Go with LTE Advanced: Go to Step 14 below.
   • Surface Pro 3 and Surface 3: Go to Step 6 below.
   • Surface Pro 1 and Surface Pro 2: Skip to Step 10 below.
6. Select Configure Alternate System Boot Order.
7. Do one of the following:
   • Surface Pro 3: Select USB > SSD.
   • Surface 3: Select Network > USB > SSD.
8. Select Exit Setup.
9. Select Yes to save the configuration and restart Surface.
10. Select Secure Boot Control.
11. Select Disable. This will allow Surface to search for an alternate device to boot from instead of from your SSD.

    Note

    This may affect the look of your Surface splash screen.

12. Select Exit Setup.
13. Select Yes to save the configuration and restart Surface.
14. Select Boot configuration.
15. Select USB Storage and drag it to the top of the list. Alternatively, you can swipe left on USB Storage to boot to the device immediately. This will not affect the boot order.
16. Select Exit and then select Restart Now.

Once you’ve followed the steps above, you’re ready to start your Surface from your USB drive.

Surface Pro (5th Gen), Surface Pro (5th Gen) with LTE Advanced, Surface Go, Surface Go with LTE Advanced, Surface Laptop (1st Gen), Surface Laptop 2, Surface Book, Surface Book 2, Surface Studio (1st Gen), Surface Studio 2, Surface Pro 4, Surface 3, or Surface Pro 3 with a configured boot order in UEFI

1. Shut down your Surface.
2. Insert the bootable USB drive into the USB port on your Surface.
3. Press the power button to turn it on.
4. Follow the on-screen instructions to boot from your USB drive.

Surface Pro (5th Gen), Surface Pro (5th Gen) with LTE Advanced, Surface Go, Surface Go with LTE Advanced, Surface Laptop (1st Gen), Surface Laptop 2, Surface Book, Surface Book 2, Surface Studio (1st Gen), Surface Studio 2, Surface Pro without a configured boot order in UEFI

1. Shut down your Surface.
2. Insert the bootable USB drive into the USB port on your Surface.
3. Press and hold the volume-down button on the Surface. While you're doing this, press and release the power button.
4. The Microsoft or Surface logo appears on your screen. Continue to hold the volume-down button. Release the button once spinning dots appear beneath the logo.
5. Follow the on-screen instructions to boot from your USB drive.

Make sure that the USB drive is formatted as FAT32. Here's how to ensure the USB device is properly formatted as a bootable drive:

1. Insert a USB drive into your Surface. The USB drive should be between 8 and 32 GB in size. A 16-GB USB drive will work for most purposes.
2. Open a Command Prompt window as an administrator. (To do this, right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.)
3. In the Command Prompt window, enter diskpart, and then press Enter.
4. To determine the drive number or letter of the USB drive, at the command prompt, enter list disk, and press Enter.
   
   The list disk command displays all the disks on the computer. Note the drive number or drive letter of the USB drive.
5. At the command prompt, enter select disk X (where X is the drive number or drive letter of the USB drive that you noted in the last step), and press Enter.
6. Enter clean, and press Enter. This will delete all data from the USB drive.
7. To create a new primary partition on the USB drive, enter create part pri, and press Enter.
8. To select the partition that you just created, enter select part 1, and press Enter.
9. To format the partition, enter format fs=fat32 quick, and press Enter.
10. Enter active, and press Enter.
11. Enter exit, and press Enter.
12. When you have the operating system image that you want to boot to, save it to the root of the USB drive.

If that’s not the problem, check the following:

• Make sure that Enable Boot from USB devices is On under Advanced options of the UEFI Boot configuration screen. To find out how to boot to the UEFI configuration, see How do I use the BIOS/UEFI? and How to use Surface UEFI.
• If you have configured a boot order, check the Advanced options in the UEFI Boot configuration screen to ensure that Enable alternate boot sequence is On. To find out how to boot to the UEFI configuration, see How do I use the BIOS/UEFI? and How to use Surface UEFI.
• Use another USB drive, if possible.
• If you currently have a Windows Insider build installed, you may need to first turn off and then turn on Secure Boot for the USB boot drive to be recognized. For more info on how to change Secure Boot, see How do I use the BIOS/UEFI? and How to use Surface UEFI.