A recovery drive lets you reset your Surface to its factory settings and can help you troubleshoot and fix problems with your Surface device. Windows comes with a built-in tool to create a USB recovery drive. You'll need to provide an external USB drive that:

For Windows 8.1, see Create a USB recovery drive. To download Windows 11 installation media, see Recovery options in Windows. Create a recovery drive so you can reinstall Windows 10 or Windows 11 in case you experience a major issue such as hardware failure.

Select the USB drive you'd like to use for your recovery drive, then select Next. Select Create. The recovery image and necessary recovery tools will be copied to your USB flash drive, which will take a while, depending on your PC and the size of the recovery image.

Create a recovery drive. Surface comes with a built-in tool to create a USB recovery drive. To create a recovery drive, you'll need an external USB drive formatted to FAT32, with enough available storage space for all your recovery data. Note: You can also download the recovery files from the Surface website.

Select Start > Settings > System > Recovery. Open Recovery. Next to Reset this PC, select Reset PC and choose an option: Keep my files —Reinstalls Windows 11 but keeps your personal files and any apps that came with your PC. This option removes changes you made to settings, as well as apps and drivers you installed.

For Windows 8.1, see Create a USB recovery drive. To download Windows 11 installation media, see Recovery options in Windows. Create a recovery drive so you can reinstall Windows 10 or Windows 11 in case you experience a major issue such as hardware failure.

What you need. To download the recovery image, you’ll need a USB drive. Before you download a recovery image, format your USB drive to FAT32. To download a recovery image, please sign in with your Microsoft account. Having trouble signing in? Contact Us.

Connect the installation media you created to your PC and reinstall Windows 11. Open File Explorer and select the drive with the installation media. From the root directory of the drive, double-click setup.exe, and then select Yes when asked if you’d like to allow the app to make changes to your device.

Tap the Windows Start button and type BitLocker. Select the Manage BitLocker Control Panel app from the list of search results. In the BitLocker app select Back up your recovery key. Select where you want the key backed up.

Windows 11 Windows 10 Windows 8.1. If you're having problems with your PC, the following table can help you decide which recovery option to use. Click one of the recovery options below and follow the steps to try to get things working again. Remove an installed Windows update. Reset your PC. Use the Startup Repair function.