1

I have a Microsoft Surface Laptop whose usb does not work. It had a short and the device is permanently disabled (I'm fairly certain it is broken hardware-wise). Regardless, that is the only port this device has, so therefore ethernet is not an option either. It is running Windows 10 currently.

The laptop has one single drive. Is it possible to boot from a partition of this drive? I tried flashing the Arch ISO to it, but both Rufus and balenaEtcher refuse to recognize that partition as a separate drive (because it's not. It's the same C: drive). Is there a way to format this partition such that is it detected as a separate drive?

Another option might be PXE over WiFi? But I have no clue if this is possible with this hardware.

I do not want a dual boot. I am erasing windows and install linux. Don't care about any data on this machine.

Improve this question
2
  • Just a guess.. if I were in this position, I would install the basic Arch linux boot via another system, change out the drive.. and try to get that basic system working on my Surface.
    – Señor CMasMas
    Commented Feb 14, 2022 at 5:14
  • Unfortunately I can't swap out the drives as the surface laptop is hard to open, and I don't even know if the drive is detachable.
    – kpaul
    Commented Feb 14, 2022 at 5:25

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

IIRC there are Linux distros that instead of booting an CD/pendrive with them, you run a installer directly from Windows.

Anyway, you can always shrink your Windows partition with Windows Disk Manager, create a new empty partition and Rufus may recognize it as a separate drive.

Also you could format a new partition as ext4 and copy the needed files for a minimal Linux installation into that drive, and use the Windows boot loader or the EFI boot loader to boot the kernel+initrd inside that partition

Or clone a full partition containing an installed Linux system instead of creating it from scratch

If any of these works you would eventually delete your current Windows partition from the running Linux system and format it for Linux use

I guess all possible options go by first shrinking your current Windows partitions -- and being very careful of not messing the boot as you have no way of restoring a broken boot in that system ;)

Improve this answer
0

Try this: here If you have a microsd card slot, you can get it to work. But you'll need the card and a USB<>microsd card adapter to put the operating system install media on the microsd card using a different machine with working usb ports.

I also might mention, how do you know USB is broken on the surface pro? If it's just one thing that fails to work on USB, try different cables, different devices, etc. USB 3 does not like USB 2 cables, even though the connectors look the same.

Good luck! I have faith in you! If you already removed Windows from the surface pro, I don't think you'll ever get Linux on the machine. I also don't think you can replace Windows, just install along side it with dual boot.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .