Linux Works, Windows Doesn't, HELP!

[fastamdman]

I have a new surface 2017, Core i5, 128gb nvme storage, 4gb of ram.  Everything was great until the fall creators update that I installed gave me a BSOD on reboot.  I could NOT get into windows.  So I tossed in my windows flash drive and it gave me a bsod while trying to load it.  I grabbed my linux flash drive, and booted from it.  Ensured that the drive was still functional etc.  Formatted the drive and rebooted with a windows usb.  Still gave me a bsod when trying to load the installer.

 

Long story short, I can install linux to the nvme drive.  I can format the drive however I would like, but no matter what I do, I can NOT install windows.  I've tried 5 different ISO's and the 2 surface recovery images and they all BSOD as soon as the loader would start to come up.

 

I can return the device to microsoft and get it replaced, but it's a 3 hour drive there and a 3 hour drive back.  Before I do that this weekend, I am hoping SOMEONE has any tips/suggestions.

 

If you can help me resolve this, I will literally PAY the person that helps me figure this out.  Whether its buying them a game or giving them some bitcoin, I don't care lol.  Just help me solve this please

[xriqn]

Have you tried installing windows 8.1 on it? Windows 10 could be the problem.

[MSWindowsinside]

Have you already tried wiping the disks partition table using the DISKPART CLEAN command?

[MSWindowsinside]

1 minute ago, xriqn said:

Have you tried installing windows 8.1 on it? Windows 10 could be the problem.

There are no drivers for Windows 8.1 for that laptop.

[cflanders]

Do you have a way to boot from an external drive entirely? If so, I would say hook up that drive and boot straight from that it instead of the internal drive on the computer. You will need to make sure drivers and a full copy of windows are already loaded onto that drive. If that fixes it, it is probably the drive in the Surface which would have to be replaced. 

 

*I am not sure which model of Surface you have. I am assuming that you can get into the BIOS on a Surface since I have never used one. 

[fastamdman]

1 minute ago, MSWindowsinside said:

Have you already tried wiping the disks partition table using the DISKPART CLEAN command?

I can't use diskpart as I can't get into windows, windows PE, command prompt etc.

 

However, I installed linux mint and have used gparted, kde partition and a few others.  I ensured that it was formatted blank, formatted to ntfs, formatted to fat32 etc.  I've tried pretty much everything I can think of with that route lol.

[MSWindowsinside]

1 minute ago, fastamdman said:

I can't use diskpart as I can't get into windows, windows PE, command prompt etc.

 

However, I installed linux mint and have used gparted, kde partition and a few others.  I ensured that it was formatted blank, formatted to ntfs, formatted to fat32 etc.  I've tried pretty much everything I can think of with that route lol.

When you start from a Windows 10 installation USB drive, you can open the command prompt using Shift+F10 (after clicking Install now I believe). It's just another thing you could try, I have no other clues really.

[fastamdman]

1 minute ago, cflanders said:

Do you have a way to boot from an external drive entirely? If so, I would say hook up that drive and boot straight from that it instead of the internal drive on the computer. You will need to make sure drivers and a full copy of windows are already loaded onto that drive. If that fixes it, it is probably the drive in the Surface which would have to be replaced. 

 

*I am not sure which model of Surface you have. I am assuming that you can get into the BIOS on a Surface since I have never used one. 

 

I can get into the bios without any issues.  I don't think the drive is bad because I can install linux on it and everything works just fine.  Unfortunately I don't have an external hard drive or I would give that a shot.  I have tried 3 different flash drives as well, a 16gb, a 32gb and a 256gb.

[xriqn]

What is the BSOD error?

[fastamdman]

Just now, MSWindowsinside said:

When you start from a Windows 10 installation USB drive, you can open the command prompt using Shift+F10 (after clicking Install now I believe).

That is my problem though, when I put in the usb drive with the windows 10 install on it.  It will start to boot from it, the icon spins and then it will BSOD.  So before it even comes up to the first install part where it shows English, next etc.  It BSOD's before the loader even comes up.

 

The only time it won't bsod is when it's going off a linux distro.  All windows iso's are bsod'ing before the loader comes up, but they work perfectly fine on my desktop lol.

[xriqn]

Just now, fastamdman said:

That is my problem though, when I put in the usb drive with the windows 10 install on it.  It will start to boot from it, the icon spins and then it will BSOD.  So before it even comes up to the first install part where it shows English, next etc.  It BSOD's before the loader even comes up.

 

The only time it won't bsod is when it's going off a linux distro.  All windows iso's are bsod'ing before the loader comes up, but they work perfectly fine on my desktop lol.

What is the error code?

[fastamdman]

1 minute ago, xriqn said:

What is the BSOD error?

There have been about 30 of them.  Sometimes it bsod's so "hard" that it won't even finish the blue screen.  Example it will say the following on the blue screen.  "Your pc ran into a prob" that is it.  It literally stops right there, at the word problem, without even finishing it.  Other times I have seen irql_not_less_or_equal, I've also seen acpi.sys and like 20 others.

[MSWindowsinside]

1 minute ago, fastamdman said:

That is my problem though, when I put in the usb drive with the windows 10 install on it.  It will start to boot from it, the icon spins and then it will BSOD.  So before it even comes up to the first install part where it shows English, next etc.  It BSOD's before the loader even comes up.

 

The only time it won't bsod is when it's going off a linux distro.  All windows iso's are bsod'ing before the loader comes up, but they work perfectly fine on my desktop lol.

Aha I misread that part at first. Then I have no clue, almost sounds like a UEFI BIOS issue at that point. As far as I know, Surface BIOS updates are delivered through Windows Update so it could be that it screwed up when updating. I think it might be best to turn to Microsoft for this one, unless someone else still has ideas.

[xriqn]

On the installer start bit, choose repair your computer and go into cmd.

Once in CMD type SFC /SCANNOW

If it finds no errors then I suppose I can't help you further. If it finds something, use the same CMD window and type this:

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

 

Alternatively you could get a WinPE thing and use the CMD from there I suppose, so long as you navigate to the internal SSD with CMD first.

EDIT: Before doing SFC /SCANNOW make sure to navigate to the SSD.

[fastamdman]

Just now, MSWindowsinside said:

Aha I misread that part at first. Then I have no clue, almost sounds like a UEFI BIOS issue at that point. As far as I know, Surface BIOS updates are delivered through Windows Update so it could be that it screwed up when updating. I think it might be best to turn to Microsoft for this one, unless someone else still has ideas.

 

That was my exact thought.  I have a feeling that it updated the firmware or bios and then during a reboot it failed to a bsod and could just never recover from it.  I was just hoping I could somehow resolve it through linux.

[fastamdman]

Just now, xriqn said:

On the installer start bit, choose repair your computer and go into cmd.

Once in CMD type SFC /SCANNOW

If it finds no errors then I suppose I can't help you further. If it finds something, use the same CMD window and type this:

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

You aren't following me.  I can't get to the installer bit.  It will BSOD before the installer opens up.  Here is the process.  Surface is off, I put the flash drive in, I press the power button.  Surface logo comes on, surface logo goes away, windows logo comes on.  Windows circle dots spinning and then BSOD.  There is no way to get to a command prompt, a repair option, a restore option etc.  It's a bsod way way before any of those options.

[xriqn]

Just now, fastamdman said:

You aren't following me.  I can't get to the installer bit.  It will BSOD before the installer opens up.  Here is the process.  Surface is off, I put the flash drive in, I press the power button.  Surface logo comes on, surface logo goes away, windows logo comes on.  Windows circle dots spinning and then BSOD.  There is no way to get to a command prompt, a repair option, a restore option etc.  It's a bsod way way before any of those options.

Then I suggest using a WinPE disk to perform the commands such as Hirens BootCD. Boot one of the "mini windows" options.

[fastamdman]

Just now, xriqn said:

Then I suggest using a WinPE disk to perform the commands such as Hirens BootCD. Boot one of the "mini windows" options.

 

As I said above, I tried WinPE as well, but it does the exact same thing.  WinPE, Windows, anything windows related will BSOD before any installer or cmd prompt comes up.  The only thing that doesn't bsod is linux, which is the extremely odd part here.

[Salv8 (sam)]

4 minutes ago, MSWindowsinside said:

I think it might be best to turn to Microsoft for this one, unless someone else still has ideas.

you might be able to flash the latest BIOS from Microsoft yourself.. that MIGHT fix it, it also could be a hardware failure due to the irq error but with the randomness of the errors it could be any number of problems

flashing the BIOS could fix it but i have no clue on how to do this or if it's possible (it might be, i don't know)

[xriqn]

IRQ error could signify that there's something wrong with the RAM.

[fastamdman]

Just now, Salv8 (sam) said:

you might be able to flash the latest BIOS from Microsoft yourself.. that MIGHT fix it, it also could be a hardware failure due to the irq error but with the randomness of the errors it could be any number of problems

flashing the BIOS could fix it but i have no clue on how to do this or if it's possible (it might be, i don't know)

 

That is my best guess as well.  However I don't think there are any surface bios's that are floating around that 1 aren't installed via windows updates and 2 are able to be installed via linux or from a flash drive.  I haven't been able to find a surface model 1796 bios file anywhere thus far, but even if I did, I am assuming it would need a windows "bios update program" to go along with it lol.

[fastamdman]

Just now, xriqn said:

IRQ error could signify that there's something wrong with the RAM.

That is true, but I have seen countless numbers of errors on the bsod.  It almost seems random.  Also, if there was a ram issue, you would think that I would have issues in Linux.  Linux mint works 100% perfectly fine.  I can stress test it, I can browse the web, I can do anything I want in linux mint, I just can't install windows without it bsod'ing lol.

 

I'm thinking if it was ram or cpu or the nvme drive, I would have issues in linux as well.

[Salv8 (sam)]

1 minute ago, fastamdman said:

 

That is my best guess as well.  However I don't think there are any surface bios's that are floating around that 1 aren't installed via windows updates and 2 are able to be installed via linux or from a flash drive.  I haven't been able to find a surface model 1796 bios file anywhere thus far, but even if I did, I am assuming it would need a windows "bios update program" to go along with it lol.

most manufactures put it BIOS file where the drives are located on their website, have a look there, it also might contain some guidance on how to do it

also the bios might have a self flash feature where it can flash the file itself without the need of an os

[xriqn]

1 minute ago, fastamdman said:

That is true, but I have seen countless numbers of errors on the bsod.  It almost seems random.  Also, if there was a ram issue, you would think that I would have issues in Linux.  Linux mint works 100% perfectly fine.  I can stress test it, I can browse the web, I can do anything I want in linux mint, I just can't install windows without it bsod'ing lol.

 

I'm thinking if it was ram or cpu or the nvme drive, I would have issues in linux as well.

Maybe windows just wasn't destined to be with your hardware lol.

[fastamdman]

1 minute ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

most manufactures put it BIOS file where the drives are located on their website, have a look there, it also might contain some guidance on how to do it

also the bios might have a self flash feature where it can flash the file itself without the need of an os

Ya, best I could find was this link https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/deploy-the-latest-firmware-and-drivers-for-surface-devices

 

Problem is that is just firmware / drivers and they are all .msi files that need to be installed inside of windows lol.

 

Actually, I found this link that has a .rom file that "might" be for my surface.  It came with a PDF so I will read through it.  Heres the link in case anyone else needs it in the future.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7190