This afternoon, Microsoft pushed out Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16291 to the PCs of Fast Ring Insiders across the world. Along with the usual changelog for this build, the Windows Insider team also provided an update on the situation where some were having issues installing builds to their Surface Pro 3 devices.
The Insider Team links to a post on the Microsoft Answers forum, where it is explained how exactly one can recover a “Won’t Boot” Surface Pro 3 device. The post is penned by Jason Howard, who explains that teams at Microsoft have been hard at work to triage reports, now uncovering the cause of the problem in the first place. To be clear, the workaround applies to Surface Pro 3 devices on build 16288.1 or 16291.
- Prepare a bootable USB image from a working PC
- With the device powered off, boot your Surface Pro 3 device from the USB drive
- When the Windows setup box appears, press Shift + F10
- In the Command Prompt window that appears, type: wpeutil reboot
- Hit enter to execute this command and immediately remove the USB drive from the computer
- The device will reboot and load the Windows OS as expected
Of course, the above is only a workaround to allow you to boot back into the Windows 10 Operating System. Jason also recommended some advanced steps to permanently fix the issue.
- Open a web browser and navigate to aka.ms/fixsp3ec
- Download the file: fixsp3.zip
- Open File Explorer on your PC and navigate to the Downloads folder
Downloads is the default folder, it may be different if you have changed your default location- Right-click the file fixsp3.zip and select extract all
- A window will open after extraction. Right-click the file fixsp3.cmd and choose Run as Administrator
- The process will execute and implement the necessary patch to prevent this bug from recurring
- Reboot your Surface Pro 3 device. It is now fully patched.
Microsoft is saying that a permanent fix for the issue is in the build pipeline, coming in the next flighted build that is 16294 or greater. For now, though, even if your device has not hit the bug, it might still pop up in the short run, so heed the warnings from Microsoft and try the above fixes before you proceed with using your Surface Pro 3 device.
