My surface won’t allow me to log in, even before I can enter my password it screen blurs and does nothing, any help would be appreciated, TIA

Question

Is there an easy fix for this?

Answer 1

Hello matthew,

Thank you so much for posting in Microsoft Community.

I appreciate you raising this concern to us, and I understand that you're having issues logging-in with your Surface. You got me here; we'll definitely sort this out together. Before anything else, allow me to ask few questions:

• is your Surface stuck in log-in/sign-in page?
• is there any errors or error code showing?

This issue could be caused by a number of factors, including a software glitch or a hardware problem. Here are a few steps you can try to resolve the issue:

1. Restart your device: Hold down the power button for at least 20 seconds to clear the hardware cache. If the face recognition still won’t work by doing a hard restart, proceed to the next step.
2. Reset your device: You can bypass the login screen by resetting your device. To reset your Surface from the sign-in screen, press and hold the Shift key while selecting the Power icon, then select Restart. After your Surface restarts to the Choose an option screen, select Troubleshoot > Reset this PC.

Please let me know how it goes.

Best regards,

Rolando S.

Answer 2

Hi Rolando,

Thanks so much for your help and support with this. Unfortunately, it didn’t work and the computer has reverted to its original state, so no progress whatsoever. Is there a further step to take to resolve this issue. TIA, and happy new year to you.

Answer 3

Hello matthew,

Happy New Year!

Thank you so much for your response and I appreciate you doing all those steps. Sorry to hear that the issue is not resolved still. There is one thing I can suggest that can solve the issue which is doing the clean installation. This is a complete reset to your Surface as this does not just remove everything from the device but also downloads a new operating system.

To do so, we must have the following things:

• USB Flash Drive (not less than 16GB and not more than 32GB)
• A working computer that is running in Windows.

How to Download, Create and Use a USB recovery drive

To download the Recovery Image:

• You'll need another working device running on Windows.

1. Go to: Download the recovery image for your Surface
2. Sign in with your Microsoft Account
3. From the list of Surface devices available, select the device that you need a recovery image for
   Please note that while you will only be presented with devices that are currently registered on your account, you will also be presented with the option to get an image for a different type of device. If you try to use this option, you will be prompted to enter the serial number for that device
4. Download the recovery image using the button on the page
5. When the download bar pops up at the bottom of your screen, save the file in a location you will be able to find it.

 Format USB Drive:

• Note: Formatting a recovery drive will erase anything that is already stored on your USB drive. Make sure to transfer any important data from your USB drive to another storage device before using it to create a Surface USB recovery drive.

1. Insert your USB drive into the USB port of your PC.
2. From the desktop, open File Explorer
3. Tap and hold or right-click on the USB drive and choose Format
4. Select FAT32 as the file system and enter a Volume label to name the USB drive, such as RECOVERY, and then tap or click Start
5. Tap or click OK to erase the contents of the USB drive
6. Tap or click OK when the format is complete

Create a recovery drive:

1. On your Surface or PC, open recovery image that you downloaded by double-clicking it or right click then select Extract and then Extract all.
2. Select the USB drive you formatted earlier for the location and click Extract.

Use a USB recovery drive to reset your Surface:

1. Shutdown the Surface
2. Insert the USB recovery drive into the USB port
3. Press and hold the volume-down (-) key
4. Press and release the power button
5. When the Surface logo appears, release the volume-down (-) key
6. Surface will start the recovery software on the USB recovery drive
7. When prompted, choose your language options and keyboard layout
8. Select Troubleshoot
9. Select Recover from a Drive. Choose Remove Everything and Fully Clean the Drive. Recovering this PC.
10. If prompted, select Repartition the drives
11. If prompted for BitLocker Key, tap Skip this Drive

Please give this a shot and let me know if it helps.

Best wishes,

Rolando S.

Answer 4

Hello matthew,

We haven't heard from you, so we assume that your issue has already been addressed. We will not be monitoring this thread moving forward so, if you need further assistance, please create a new thread to discuss these concerns by clicking this link: Create a new question (microsoft.com)

Thank you for understanding.

Regards,

Rolando S.