I have a new Surface Laptop and want to boot to a USB thumb. Unlike the Surface Pro, the laptop does not have a Volume button. It does use F5/F6, but neither work for booting. I know that I can select a custom startup from within Win 10 Pro, but want to go from power off to USB boot. Thanks.
Hello Jimmy, :)
This doesn't list the "Surface Laptop", but you might give it a try to see.
Boot Microsoft Surface from a USB device
Surface Studio, Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, Surface 3, or Surface Pro 3 with a configured boot order in UEFI
Step 1: Shut down your Surface.
Step 2: Insert the bootable USB drive into the USB port on your Surface.
Step 3: Press the power button to turn it on.
Step 4: Follow the on-screen instructions to boot from your USB drive.
Otherwise, you should be able to use OPTION ONE below to boot from the USB from advanced startup.
Thanks, Brink, but those options also failed. I know that I can do it from the advanced startup options, but want to boot from a shutdown. There can be times when you can't get into Windows to get to the advanced startup options.
I'm not familiar with the UEFI firmware settings for the "Surface laptop" to give better specific details, but your should be able to change the boot priority in its UEFI to have "USB device" listed first and your Windows drive second.
This way when you boot with a USB connect, you should have an option to boot from it if doesn't automatically.
FWIW, you can get toe system to boot to a USB device from startup, if you open the on-screen keyboard at power up, click Shift to highlight it, and restart. That actually just takes you to the Windows System menu where you can choose to boot to USB on the next startup. I don't know whether this would work if you can't access Windows normally in the first place.
Sure. If you can to the System menu by any means, you're good to go. Otherwise, it would be tough to impossible to get to the drive for a more technical repair.
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