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I Bricked my Surface! Woot!

eeisner

New Member
Alrighty y'all, I bricked my Surface. Am I proud? Hell no. But I did. Sooo I need some advice.

Essentially, I was upgrading from Windows RT 8.1 Preview to the final version that came in as an update in the Windows Store. No problems there, right? Everything goes well, gets through all the steps, yada yada. Then my Surface goes to boot into 8.1, and I get a blue screen? What? The BCD is corrupted and missing required info? Now how did that one happen?

So I'm thinking, since my only flash drive has GTAV installed on it for my 360, I need to buy a flash drive and put the Windows 8 recovery on it? That seem right? Anything else I should try?

Now I'm gunna go in a corner and cry, but be thankful my laptop had no issues upgrading or I would be one FUBAR student.
 

demandarin

Active Member
Basically..makes sure its a 16gb one. Then go to Microsoft site on your pc and sign on. Then download the win8 recovery or OS. Then load it into your tablet and start the recovery process. I believe. Good luck and hope you get it solved soon. Check out the other threads on recovery.
 
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eeisner

New Member
If it turns on it's not officially bricked :). Just call Microsoft Support and have them help you.
yea yea technicalities. It only turns on half the time, and goes straight to the blue screen.

If only my recovery USB wasn't at home in LA, while I'm at school in Tucson. I guess I'll have to create a new recovery flash drive and attempt to fix it that way. If that's a no go, then I'll report back. Thanks all
 

oion

Well-Known Member
yea yea technicalities. It only turns on half the time, and goes straight to the blue screen.

If only my recovery USB wasn't at home in LA, while I'm at school in Tucson. I guess I'll have to create a new recovery flash drive and attempt to fix it that way. If that's a no go, then I'll report back. Thanks all

Since apparently you have a backup laptop, ask someone at home to mail you the USB key?
 
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eeisner

New Member
So apparently I'm not the only one with this issue, and per The Verge, Microsoft has pulled the RT 8.1 update due to this issue affecting users. At least Microsoft recognized the problem...

I have my flash drives in the mail and hopefully they get here today and I can figure out which one has the recovery on it. Woo!
 

oion

Well-Known Member
So apparently I'm not the only one with this issue, and per The Verge, Microsoft has pulled the RT 8.1 update due to this issue affecting users. At least Microsoft recognized the problem...

I have my flash drives in the mail and hopefully they get here today and I can figure out which one has the recovery on it. Woo!

Woow. That deserves another thread, thanks for the heads up. Interestingly, some users are affected while others aren't--that's going to be a doozy to straighten out. Looks like it's the upgrade path that has problems.
 
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eeisner

New Member
so i got my recovery flash drive and got my surface repaired and all, except apparently im dual booting windows RT 8.1 and the 8.1 preview... hmmmm.
 

chris6878

New Member
I dl 8.1 twice and got the bsod twice. A easy way to get back to win 8 is to go into safe mode. their you will have recovery options to roll it back to factory
 

TheCudder

Member
Which update method did you use? Aside from an extremely slow download, I had no issues at all updating my Surface to RT 8.1 from the Preview. I went to the MSFT "Update Preview to Final 8.1" site (something along those lines), opened the Windows store and clicked the link to download and install 8.1.
 
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eeisner

New Member
Which update method did you use? Aside from an extremely slow download, I had no issues at all updating my Surface to RT 8.1 from the Preview. I went to the MSFT "Update Preview to Final 8.1" site (something along those lines), opened the Windows store and clicked the link to download and install 8.1.
yup the standard process. I know i'm not the only affected user as i've slowly started to see similar posts popping up on other forums and MSoft pulling the update. It's all good though... used recovery and just a basic line in command prompt to rebuild the BCD, and the dual boot was simply fixed by removing the windows.old folder and removing the boot option in msconfig.
 
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