How to Configure Surface Book UEFI/BIOS Settings

Since the first generation of Microsoft Surface Pro and Surface 3, Microsoft has implemented custom BIOS firmware on those devices to support required hardware features and securities.

Starting with Surface Pro 4, Microsoft has created its own UEFI firmware for use with newer devices. This new firmware is called Surface UEFI which is currently used on newer devices including Surface Go, Surface Book, and Surface Studio.

In this article, you will find out how to get to the Surface Book UEFI settings. You will also learn how to configure the UEFI settings to improve the device security, check your device information, and more.

Table of contents

1. How to access Surface Book UEFI settings?
2. How to Check Your Surface Book Device Information via UEFI Settings?
3. How to Configure Device Boot Order on the new Surface Book?
4. How to Manage Device Components on Surface Book?
5. How to Protect UEFI settings with a password on Surface Book?
6. What is Secure Boot Control?
7. What is Trusted Platform Module (TPM)?
8. Other Surface UEFI Settings

1How to access Surface Book UEFI settings?

You can enter the Surface Book UEFI setup screen only while your device is starting up. Here is how you do that:

1. Shut down your Surface Book.
2. Press and hold the Volume Up button on your Surface, then press and release the Power button.
3. When you see the Surface logo screen appear, release the Volume Up button. The Surface UEFI screen will appear in a few seconds.

After you have made any changes to the UEFI settings, you can restart your Surface by:

• In the Surface UEFI menu, choose Exit, and click on Restart Now

2How to Check Your Surface Book Device Information via UEFI Settings?

The first displayed page when you enter UEFI settings is the PC information page. On the page, you can find out more information about your device identities such as Model, System UUID (Universally Unique Identifier), Serial Number, and Asset Tag. Moreover, it also displays all important system other components version that you might need for troubleshooting.

See also: How to manage asset tag on Surface Book.

3How to Configure Device Boot Order on the new Surface Book?

To change the alternate system boot order on your Surface Book:

1. Enter Surface UEFI settings as per the instructions above.
2. In the Surface UEFI menu, go to the Boot Configuration page as below:

On the “Configure boot device order” page, you can:

• Rearrange the boot order by dragging and dropping any boot option available on the list.
• Enable or disable any boot option by using the checkbox
• Remove the available boot option permanently by using the trash button.

4How to Manage Device Components on Surface Book?

Surface Book allows you to disable some of your surface device components and features to meet your specific security requirements. You can enable or disable those components by:

1. Access Surface UEFI settings as per the instructions above.
2. In the Surface UEFI menu, go to Devices and you will see the following options:
3. In my Surface Book with System UEFI version 231.1662.769, you can choose to enable or disable the following device’s components or ports:
   1. Docking USB Port
   2. Front Camera
   3. Rear Camera
   4. IR Camera
   5. On-board Audio
   6. Wi-Fi & Bluetooth
   7. Bluetooth

5How to Protect UEFI settings with a password on Surface Book?

You can prevent others from changing your UEFI settings by setting an Administrator Password in UEFI settings. To do that:

1. Enter Surface UEFI settings as per the instructions above.
2. Go to the Security section below:
   
3. To set the UEFI password, click on Add or Change button and you will see the following requirements:

• You will need to enter a password in the box with your keyboard or the on-screen keyboard with the following criteria:
  • Minimum Length: 6 characters
  • Maximum Length: 128 characters
  • May contain a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.
• In case you have already set the password before and you want to remove it, simply leave the password box blank.

6What is Secure Boot Control?

The Secure Boot is a technology that blocks the loading of uncertified bootloaders and drives. It helps to prevent your Surface from being loaded with unauthorized operating systems and malicious software applications.

If you desire to install other operating systems like Ubuntu, or other Linux distributions, you may need to disable this feature in the UEFI settings above.

7What is Trusted Platform Module (TPM)?

The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a technology that provides a major advancement over BIOS in hardware-based security features. It is a specialized chip that stores RSA encryption keys specific to each Surface device for hardware authentication.

The TPM technology is a requirement of BitLocker disk encryption. The TPM helps you to encrypt/decrypt the entire disk without requiring your complex long passphrases. It means that the encryption key and decryption key are stored within the TPM chip. So your encrypted disks can’t be accessed on other devices.

Other Surface UEFI Settings

We have also covered this topic for other Surface PCs as well, to learn more about other Surface’s UEFI settings check the link below:

• Surface Go UEFI Settings
• Surface 3 UEFI Settings
• Surface Pro 3 UEFI Settings
• Surface Pro 4 UEFI Settings
• Surface Pro (2017) UEFI Settings
• Surface Book UEFI Settings