Dual Boot Surface 3 with Windows 10

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imageThis is an unusual post for this blog, but I found the process of dual booting my Surface 3 into Windows 10 unusually difficult. Normally I would open diskpart to partition and format the USB drive. I would then copy files from boot media to the USB and we’re off. Setting the USB drive to ‘Active’ with diskpart makes it bootable. No dice this go round.

Turns out none of this works well on the Surface 3, or with Windows 10, or both. Not sure, but here is how to make it work.

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Grab Surface 3 drivers

  1. Go to : https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38826
  2. Download ‘Surface Pro 3 – September 2014’
  3. Extract files and place in folder in root of C: named ‘SurfaceDrivers’

Caveats – Hard Drive

  1. You must disable Bitlocker on your drive prior to making the system dual boot so that the installing system can access the drive. Do this in the Control Panel. When done, proceed.
  2. You must shrink the C: drive to make space for a new partition for Windows 10.
    1. ‘Open Disk Management’ and choose the C: drive at the bottom
    2. Right-click this drive and choose ‘Shrink Volume…’
    3. In ‘Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB:’ enter 40000 for 40GB. Choose less if you like.
      1. If you get an error that the drive cannot be shrunk as much as you like, you will need to clean up some space and more importantly, defrag
      2. Download Auslogics Disk Defrag (free) and defrag the C: drive to make more contiguous space for the shrink (usually you do not use defrag on SSD’s, but we need to here)
      3. Try shrinking the volume again. Name the volume Win10 when done
    4. Do not format the new partition. Exit Disk Management.

Instructions – Bootable USB driveRufus2

  1. Download Windows 10 Technical Preview ISO
  2. Extract the ISO to a folder, or mount it so you can pull files off of it
  3. Download and install ‘Rufus’
  4. Insert an 8GB+ USB. Any data on the drive will be destroyed
  5. Open ‘Rufus’ and change settings to match the picture.
    • GPT partition for UEFI computers
    • FAT32 (default)
    • ‘Create a bootable disk using’ choose the Win10 ISO
  6. Click ‘Start’. When done click ‘Close’
  7. Copy the contents of the Windows 10 Technical Preview to the USB drive
  8. Leave the USB in the Surface

Instructions – BIOS

  1. Swipe in from the right of the screen and choose ‘Settings’ then ‘ Change PC Settings’
    1. Choose ‘Update and Recovery’ then ‘Recovery’
    2. Under ‘Advanced Startup’ choose ‘Restart Now’
    3. Choose ‘Troubleshoot’ then ‘Advanced Options’ then ‘UEFI Firmware Settings’ and click Restart
    4. Set ‘Secure Boot’ to disabled (THIS WILL CAUSE SURFACE TO BOOT WITH RED SCREEN NOW. THIS IS NORMAL.)
    5. Exit BIOS and boot into Windows
  2. Back in Windows, swipe from the right of the screen and choose ‘Settings’ then ‘Change PC Settings’
    1. Choose ‘Update and Recovery’ then ‘Recovery’
    2. Under ‘Advanced Startup’ choose ‘Restart Now’
    3. Choose ‘Use a Device’ then ‘USB Device’
    4. Surface will now boot from the bootable USB
  3. Go through the install normally, choosing the free partition as in the install location

Post-Install Drivers

Following install of Windows 10, go the C:\SurfaceDrivers folder and start with Intel drivers. Right click on each .inf file and choose ‘Install’. When done with all drivers reboot. Done!

Other Methods and Approaches

I have heard back quite a bit on this post. It seems to be popular! Many people mentioned in their comments that you do not need to disable Bitlocker on C: first, or that you can boot from a .VHD file. There are a multitude of ways to make this work. I picked what was most reliable, period. You can leave Bitlocker enabled, but if you have ever lost your data due to not having your Bitlocker key backed up then you know to beware with dual boot. I hope you enjoy this post and go on to learn more about Windows 10.

 

 

  jonjor