Surface Pro Boot from USB

By Sikh
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Grand Master

Sikh

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odd, i don't use any encryption and i've tried both the automatic install and the manual method and either way i just get that bug where it causes osx bootup to be exceedingly long

Yeah to fix it you just have to assign your startup disk again, which is just apple blessing the drive to efi. But anyway worked for me on lion and Mountain Lion.

I still cant find a way to change the path. Thats my only problem now.

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Grand Master

Sikh

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Update:

Booted up the surface for the first time today (thank god I dont own it or I would do this at work). Booted it via Vol Down + Power because I wanted to boot off the flash drive and work on getting Ubtuntu to fix grub. Well, it booted into live mode. After booting I realized "no flash drive is plugged in, wait WHAT, its booting of SD Card!". Yesterday it wasnt, it kept going into grub rescue, even with Vol Down + Power. Now it is. Awesome!

So, Now I reboot it a few times making sure windows still works. It does. Boot again with Vol Down + Power, booting off SD. I am ecstatic at this point.

So now, I go ahead and try to get rEFInd working. One of the instructions has you mount the hidden EFI partition. Well, lucky me, because I like to run ls everytime im in a directory if its new to me. So, after realizing im in windows and ls wont work and I need to use DIR, i was now in the EFI folder and saw "Windows, BOOT and ubuntu" dir's! The ubuntu dir had the BAD grubefi loader that kept causing it to go into rescue. I "rd /s ubuntu" and rebooted, BOOM no more rescue!

So, I continued to install rEFInd, everything went fine, rebooted twice before rEFInd showed up. I realized that rEFIt did this to me on both my macbook's and countless other macbooks I installed rEFIt on, and now rEFInd did it too me, so I wasnt surprised. Im assuming it has something to do with the NVRAM catching up with the new entries, especially when I set the bootmgr manually with "bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi". So just for those who MIGHT be following along, dont be afraid if rEFInd doesnt load up right away, after the 2nd boot/on the 2nd boot, it will show up.

So now, rEFInd is on the surface, and oh look, no SD card or Flash Drive. Well after some tinkering, if the EFI folder has a loader, rEFInd will find it automatically. So from my Live SD, I installed to my Flash Drive, rebooted and BOOM, rEFInd showed ubuntu. Clicked on it and the flash drive was flashing away!

It booted into a actual ubuntu install. I am SO ****ing happy. Now the goal is to install to the SD card, verify it works again and then im done. I will write up a tutorial and I will post it in this thread or possibly create a new one.I will keep updating this thread because I am not done yet. Also this is making me want to go out and buy one, and I might because after this 64GB is perfect for me and a staples by me has 2. Im not in a rush, but im damn excited!

Good news is, pen, touch cover, everything on the surface works BEAUTIFUL in ubuntu!

After this, i will figure out what wireless driver specifically the surface uses in windows, try to find a linux / comparable linux verison. Install it or Make/Compile it if I have to, test out to see if wifi works. If I can get Wifi to work, then my work is done and I will probably go out and pick up one for myself.

Thanks for all the help guys, any questions please feel free to ask.

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Grand Master

Sikh

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Thanks man!

It is the Marvell AVASTAR 350N Wireless Network Controller.

Ill work on looking for the driver tomorrow, need some sleep tonight, its midnight and i work at 8 :(.

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Grand Master

Sikh

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Because why do people dual boot? I have already put workstation on the surface but in also a bare metal kind of a guy and someone needed to have this fun. Im just lucky its me

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Grand Master

HawkMan

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I don't know why peopel dual boot, it make sno sense today, 10 years ago it did, and even then I never did, I played around with secondary OS' for a week or two, before I realized. why would I boot to an alternative OS to do stuff I can do in my primary, and not be able to do everything I can do in my primary.

and having to wait between boots to do them, and not be able to use my main programs while I play around. meanwhile VM's allow me to keep using my main OS while using every app and near full speed in ANY OS at the same time in VM's

Multi booting just doesn't make sense any more. i's a waste of time and resources and most of all an aggravation. "OMG, I need to do xxx which is on the other OS, need to reboot back there, do it, then reboot to keep messing with this".

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Grand Master

Sikh

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I don't know why peopel dual boot, it make sno sense today, 10 years ago it did, and even then I never did, I played around with secondary OS' for a week or two, before I realized. why would I boot to an alternative OS to do stuff I can do in my primary, and not be able to do everything I can do in my primary.

and having to wait between boots to do them, and not be able to use my main programs while I play around. meanwhile VM's allow me to keep using my main OS while using every app and near full speed in ANY OS at the same time in VM's

Multi booting just doesn't make sense any more. i's a waste of time and resources and most of all an aggravation. "OMG, I need to do xxx which is on the other OS, need to reboot back there, do it, then reboot to keep messing with this".

Well I'm glad it doesn't work for you but for me i have no problem dual booting especially on the surface. Ill most likely use Linux 75%+ of the time because of work and at home ill use windows 8.

Actually on a work trip right now for the day and I'm enjoying getting use to the real windows 8 and getting visual studio set up so i can start developing. I didn't bother putting windows 8 on my desktop cause even after the RTM it has god awful multi monitor support. Also i still believe metro is made for touch and that's one reason i love my surface RT.

This was also to see how Linux support was (which is why i used one of the most popular distros) and to see if i can then precede to put mint and enjoy it like i enjoy Linux, the mint flavor.

So, while you might not like it. Some of us do. I also did it for sheer entertainment and to see how it would work overall.

UPDATE:Ubuntu does ndiswrapping and i have the inf file for the wireless driver. When i get home and steal the pro again, ill try "installing" it and we will see how it works.

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Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

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I'm not really surprised you got it working, the pro is just another pc in the end, just in a different package. One thing that might be interesting to test out though would be the difference between Win8 and Ubuntu with battery life. I figure you'll get more on win8 but it'd be interesting to see what battery life Ubuntu can give you.

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