All, I am a new Surface RT owner from England. Bought my used RT 64Gb over the weekend, reset it using the downloadable image from MS and started the update process. Lost count of how many updates but it has gone on for 3 days. Anyway, today there are more updates available so I just let it go - and got the same problem as above when it was going through the RESTART phase.
Tried various things but cannot get any further than the WiFi icon flashing and the trackpad pointer moving around a black screen.
I had created a USB recovery drive after the reset, so I plugged it in and forced the RT to boot from it (Volume down and Power etc.). Tried troubleshooting but it couldn't solve the problem. Then chose to Refresh and this seems to have worked - at least I can start the machine and everything seems to work.
I don't know how far back in the Update process it has gone (no Update History now) - I will have to wait for "These updates are available" to see if LOADS are there to be re-installed.
Does anyone KNOW which update is causing the problem? Are MS going to do anything about it? Can this specific update be excluded in any way from being installed and crippling the RT AGAIN???
If you have a USB recovery drive this post may help - if not I have no other ideas.