Surface Go 2 PXE boot from USB-C issue

Question

My school has 12 Surface Go 2 (and 100's of other Surface devices). We bought them last fall. Were able to image them from our MDT server via PXE booting at the time. We are trying to re-image them now and can no longer boot using the Microsoft USB-C dongle. We verified the dongle works via Surface Pro 7 without issue. We also verified the Surface Go 2 can PXE boot using a Surface dock. My only guess is the UEFI firmware on them out of the box worked and then it got updated and no longer does with USB-C dongle. Can anyone else confirm this issue? I can reproduce the behavior on multiple units as well.

Answer 1

I now six weeks later have confirmation this is a bug. Interestingly if you use the on screen KB rather than physical the problem doesn't occur. It is now in the hands of engineering to fix. Progress!

Answer 2

Please keep us posted.

Answer 3

The Surface Go 2 seems to have a UEFI bug in its firmware regarding PXE Boot.

You have to:

A. Move - Network Boot-IPV4 to the Top of the "Configure boot device order"

B. Disable - Under "Advanced options" - Enable alternative boot sequence

Then "Exit" and "Restart"

If you do not when PXE Booting it will pull down the Network Boot Block program and display "choices" from the PXE Boot Media list served from WDS. But choosing any of the options will "HALT" at the \Boot\Boot.SDI image screen.

If you Move the Network boot order for IPV4 "manually" to the Top of the List as described above, and then Lock the Boot order by "disabling the alternative boot sequence". Then it will behave as before and pull down the Network Boot Block program and display"choices" from the PXE Boot Media list served from the WDS. But this time the Secondary boot Image will begin to be pulled down and load as expected.

I don't know whats going on that causes this very repeatable HALT, but I suspect some sort of timing issue in the firmware.

Obviously after deploying the image, you also have to "manually" rescind the boot order so it will boot from the the Windows Boot Manager, and/or restore the ability to Enable alternate boot sequences.

We are using the Microsoft Surface Keyboard, and the Microsoft approved USB-C Ethernet dongle to boot. We have no problems requesting an IP address and downloading the initial NBP.. smooth sailing. Its the Secondary bootloader the NBP pulls down for deploying the image that appears to hang and never start transmission. We are using Unicast, IPV4. 

This "work-a-round" (works) but its suboptimal.

Answer 4

I think this is the same issue we are seeing. The fix for now that we found is remove the keyboard and use the on-screen to hit enter to choose. This bypasses the halt. Microsoft is aware and working on a fix for this odd issue.

Answer 5

That would be preferable.. but we found the Onscreen keyboard was not accepting Inputs after the NBP loaded.

So we could not select an image.

The only way to select from the WDS list menu was to connect the Surface keyboard and use the arrow keys.

The mouse was also non-functional in the text menu.

We (did not) try positioning the select image, and then yanking the keyboard out and perhaps poking the onscreen keyboard.. could that be the suggested method? The Onscreen keyboard really did appear dead.