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Clean installing Windows on a Surface device

Prerequisites

Step 1: Downloading the recovery image

Click here, and follow the instructions to download the latest available restore image for your device. This will be a .zip file.

Step 2: Preparing the USB flash drive

  1. Plug a USB flash drive into your Surface device; preferably, plug a USB 3.0 (or greater) flash drive into a USB 3.0 (or greater) port
  2. Back up any data that you want to keep from the flash drive; the flash drive will need to be erased
  3. Click the Search button on the Taskbar, type cmd, right click on Command Prompt, and click Run as administrator
  4. In the new Command Prompt window, type diskpart and press return (enter)
  5. Type list disk and press return (enter)
  6. Identify your USB flash drive in the list
  7. Type select disk x, where x is the disk number from the output of the previous command, and press return (enter)
  8. Type list partition and press return (enter)
  9. For each partition in the list,
    • Type select partition x, where x is the partition number, and press return (enter)
    • Type delete partition override and press return (enter)
  10. To make a final check that every partition has been deleted,
    • Type list partition and press return (enter)
    • There should be no partitions listed
  11. To create the FAT32 partition, type create partition primary and press return (enter)
  12. To format the partition with the FAT32 filesystem, type format fs=fat32 quick and press return (enter)
  13. To assign a drive letter to the new partition, type assign letter=w and press return (enter)

Step 3: Copying the required files to the USB flash drive

Click here, and follow the instructions to copy the required files to the USB flash drive.

Step 4: Reinstall Windows using the USB flash drive

Follow the instructions in the article linked in step 3 to reinstall Windows. We recommend that you choose to "Fully clean the drive" when asked, as this makes sure your data is completely removed.