Creating a Windows RT Recovery USB Key

PLEASE NOTE: Now that Microsoft has released their officially supported fix I am no longer providing the download for the recovery drive. If you wish to keep a small recovery drive then repair your system using the instructions from Microsoft, then follow “Option 1” to create a new small boot drive.

Microsoft have now released the Full Recovery Image for WinRT (3.7GB download). You can get it here http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-service-and-recovery/surface-rt-startup-error-0xc000000d?lc=1033 

It uses the same steps to complete the upgrade with the last part being to recreate the full recovery volume. Some news sites are saying the MS image will revert you to 8.0, it does not. It will complete the 8.1 upgrade and then the extra steps are to recreate the on-device recovery volume with the 8.0 image which only applies if you rollback sometime in the future.

COMMENT: I’ve also received confirmation that my approach works on a Japanese and other non-English language WindowsRT devices, which is good news as that’s not a test I could have done, and hadn’t even considered tbh. Also, While I refer to “Surface” because that’s what I have. these steps will also apply to any WindowsRT tablet device.

So something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. You do of course have the USB key you created shortly after setting up your Surface, don’t you?

Don’t worry, even though I do this sort of thing for a living, even I hadn’t created a recovery USB Key. Luckily for me though (or unlucky depending on how you look at these things), I have two Surface tablets. After the Win8.1 upgrade, one worked fine, the other suffered the Boot Configuration failure – https://kickthatcomputer.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/windows-rt-8-1-upgrade-fails-with-boot-configuration-error/

So here I’m going to describe the ways I’ve found to create your recovery USB key. Make sure to read to the end because you will most likely also need to recover your BitLocker encryption key as well (it’s like the complications never end!)

Windows RT 8.1 upgrade fails with Boot Configuration error

UPDATE 19 August 2014 regarding KB14-045 bluescreens:

Although I don’t have a fix, there seems to be a lot of people finding this post while searching about the recent bluescreen issue caused by Microsoft Updates KB14-045. I have started a new post about this issue here:

https://kickthatcomputer.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/windows-update-kb2982791-ms14-045-causing-bluescreen/

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Microsoft have now released the Full Recovery Image for WinRT (3.7GB download). You can get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-service-and-recovery/surface-rt-startup-error-0xc000000d?lc=1033

It uses the same steps to complete the upgrade with the last part being to recreate the full recovery volume. Some news sites are saying the MS image will revert you to 8.0, it does not. It will complete the 8.1 upgrade and then the extra steps are to recreate the on-device recovery volume with the 8.0 image which only applies if you rollback sometime in the future.

First point – How annoying is it that you can only update Windows RT from the App Store, although probably not a drama if you only have one tablet. Slightly annoying if you have two. Both need to download the update, so that’s 2x the several GB needed. If you happen to be an enterprise/business that decided to buy several of them (does such a entity exist?) then it would appear you are about to have a ton of downloads happening unless you boost your proxy cache size.

And now for todays story. I updated one Surface RT with no drama. It took a long time but I just let it run overnight and it was all good the next morning. The other tablet, not so good.

Recovery
Your PC needs to be repaired
The Boot Configuration Data file is missing some required information
File: \BCD
Error code: 0xc000000d

Yay.

Although it takes a while, and might be a bit tricky, it does seem to be fairly easy to recover from. (UPDATE: I have now received multiple confirmations that this works, and no data is lost!)

Some users unable to connect with ActiveSync

So here’s one that had me stumped. I can’t get ActiveSync connections working for some users on some devices. I’ve found a lot of posts around the internet talking about it being an issue related to self-signed SSL certificates, but I don’t think that is what my problem is.

The environment:

• 1 x Exchange 2013 running on Server 2012
• 1 x Internal private Windows PKI handling certificates
• 3 x Active Directory based user accounts
• 2 x Windows RT Surface tablets
• 1 x iPad Mini
• 2 x PC running Windows 8
• 1 x iPhone
• 2 x Windows Phone 7

A fair collection of devices to compare the issue across.

So what does/used to work?

Microsoft Surface Wifi issues

There’s an issue that seems to have been I introduced after the last round of updates, either a driver or firmware update.

Basically what happens is the connection drops into “limited” mode and you lose connectivity. People have reported various methods to reconnect, I find just disconnecting and reconnecting the connection worked fine… for another 20-30 minutes at least.

My access point has 2.4 and 5ghz so I just switch between them when it happens. Still a huge pain though. There are a few registry related hacks that have been suggested, but I’m going to wait and see if an official fix comes soon.

Microsoft Surface RT Tingle sensation

This didn’t really cause me any concern, but I thought it was very odd for a modern computing device to exhibit this. Considering all the shielding and insulation usually required of modern electronics it was rather unexpected.

Something I noticed a long time ago while laying in bed with the electric blanket turned on was that you could feel this small tingle when touching another person. While I haven’t exhaustively researched this phenomena my belief is that the electric blanket is generating a small electromagnetic field which is then inducing a simliar field in a person lying on the blanket. When lightly touching another person (using the back of your fingers is most obvious) you feel a small tingle like an extremely mild electric current. I’ve played with electronics a lot as a kid so I knew it wasn’t a “bad” thing.

I have not felt a simliar thing from a piece of computer equipment though except for when working with computers that had bad power supplies that didn’t have proper grounding.

Microsoft Surface RT exchange process and experiences

My daughter dropped her brand new Surface tablet from a height of about 2 feet (from her lap while sitting). Somehow it managed to land in an orientation that wasn’t one of the 72 tested by Microsoft and managed to smash the glass in one corner of the screen. This happened about 3 hours after it was opened on Christmas day and was disappointing for several reasons, one of which was the significant points that had been made about how strong the tablet was supposed to be.

Anyway, long story short, we had several other issues with touch covers splitting and Microsoft agreed to exchange the tablet at no charge. Greatly appreciated.

It still took about 2 weeks to go through the process of organising the exchange. The tablet was still useable, however two weeks means there was now content that needed to be backed up and transferred to the new device. There were three different users profiles and various photos and documents that we wanted to save.