Since Windows 8, Microsoft has introduced a new way to reset your computer to the factory settings. But this function will work only if you have a recovery partition on your disk drive or a recovery drive.

For Microsoft Surface, every device has a recovery partition by default from the factory. However, If you can’t access the partition or it has been deleted for any reasons. In this situation, you can still download a specific recovery image for your Surface tablet from the Microsoft Surface support website.

Table of contents

  1. Download the recovery image
  2. Creating a recovery drive using the downloaded recovery image

1Download the recovery image

Prior downloading a right recovery image for your Surface tablet, you need to have a Microsoft account and the serial number of your Surface device.

  1. Visit the Download a recovery image for Microsoft Surface website.
  2. Sign in with your Microsoft account
  3. Choose your current Surface device, If you have registered your Surface devices already. Otherwise, choose your Surface model and type your Surface device’s serial number in the Option 2. Then click Continue button.
  4. For some models, it may have multiple recovery images for different Windows version.
  5. Click on Download button to download the recovery image.

2 Creating a recovery drive using the downloaded recovery image

After you have clicked the Download button, it will lead you to Step 3 that will show you how to create a recovery drive for your Surface device.

How to create recovery drive to reset your Surface Pro (2017)

To learn more about how to use the downloaded recovery image, make sure you read our step-by-step guide here.

Microsoft might update the recovery image in the future. Make sure you check back again when you need to reset your Surface device next time.