Forum Discussion
How to enable keyboard in WinRE environment?
I have an issue with my trusted MS Surface Pro 8: As I just had to learn it seems to have a problem with a missing keyboard driver in my system's Win RE.
When I restart my device with "Shift" pressed it brings up the expected blue "Choose an option screen" of the Windows RE environment (showing "Continue",
"Turn off PC", "Use a device" and "Troubleshoot").
However, in this mode the system reacts neither to the attached keyboard, nor to touch-input nor to pen-input. NO reaction what-so-ever! The only way out here is to force-reset it (by pressing power long enough) and then it reboots again. It seems that the keyboard driver is missing here!
The keyboard works (as you can see...) - that is definitely not the issue here. The keyboard also works if I bring up the UEFI environment (i.e. powering on the device while keeping the Volume-Up key pressed). Here the keyboard works, too. But it does not work in the blue WinRE environment and this is severely troubling!
I want/need this to be working again in case something bad happens to my system and I would need to be able to operate this menu. I also want to change one of the setting under "advanced options" (that's why I rebooted my device into this mode in the first place).
What do I need to do to get the attached Surface keyboard working in this mode?
3 Replies
WinRE uses its own Windows image and drivers. Your Surface keyboard working in Windows and UEFI therefore does not guarantee it will work in recovery. Missing or incompatible Surface drivers in WinRE are a possibility, although all input failing could also mean the recovery environment is freezing.
Start with a way to access the menu:
- Connect a basic wired USB keyboard through a USB-C adapter before entering WinRE. Avoid Bluetooth keyboards, which generally are not available there. If the USB keyboard works, you can use Tab, arrow keys and Enter to reach Advanced options.
- Back in Windows, install available Windows and Surface firmware/driver updates, including applicable optional driver updates, then restart and retest. Updating the normal Windows keyboard driver alone does not necessarily update WinRE.
- If built-in recovery still fails, download the official Surface recovery image for your Surface Pro 8 from Microsoft’s Surface recovery page. Follow its instructions to create a recovery USB. Creating it erases the USB drive, so use one with nothing you need on it.
- With the Surface shut down and the recovery USB connected, hold Volume Down, press and release Power, then release Volume Down when the Surface logo appears. Test whether the keyboard and touch work in that recovery environment.
Booting the recovery USB does not itself erase the Surface. Do not select “Recover from a drive” just to test input, and have your BitLocker recovery key available.
If input works from the official recovery USB but not the internal WinRE, that strongly points to the internal recovery image. Repairing or rebuilding that image with the correct Surface drivers is the next step for Microsoft support or an experienced technician. Simply disabling and re-enabling WinRE does not add missing drivers. Keep the tested recovery USB as a fallback until the internal environment is repaired.
I found a page with instructions how to integrate additional drivers into a winre.wim (using DISM). However, when I simplistically added all the drivers that had been unpacked to "C:\Program Files\SurfaceUpdate" by the drivers update, I ended up with a "winre.wim" with a size of 1.9 GB (!) which is clearly to large to be saved to the Recovery Partition, which is only 1 GB large.
So, obviously, one can only add a certain subset of those drivers to an extended winre.wim.
Any advice on which drivers are required to get the USB ports and the keyboard working on a Surface Pro 8?Hi Jason and thanks for responding.
I already tried to replace the obviously non-working "Winre.wim" on my Surface's recovery partition with a vanilla Winre.wim from the Windows 25H2-installation ISO. That process made me familiar with diskpart, how to access the recovery partition using a drive-letter, use "reagentc /disable" and "reagent /enable" (of which the latter did NOT copy the replaced "Winre.wim" to the recovery partition as one would expect :-( ). Instead I had to get access to all those hidden and protected files using takeown and icacls etc.. But that didn't help - the keyboard is still not working when booting into the Windows recovery environment.
Either that ISO already contains the same buggy USB drivers that makes attached USB-devices and hence also the Surface keyboard non-functional or the Surface Pro-relevant drivers are missing altogether.
I also tried with a patched version of Winre.wim in which I had replaced the file "Windows\System32\drivers\USBHUB3.SYS" with an older version as that had been named as the culprit for the failing USB devices in WinRe in several placed that I had found when searching for a solution. But that did not work, either.
Following your advice I downloaded the latest drivers (file "SurfacePro8_Win11_22631_26.073.32221.0.msi") from the indicated website. It (re-)installed the latest drivers (at least it claimed so...). I didn't understand the fragment "...including applicable optional driver updates" in your response. The installation-msi doesn't present any option to select that or not. The only option once can choose, is the directory where it will unpack the files (default: "C:\Program Files\SurfaceUpdate").
The drivers all installed fine, but that installation obviously does not fiddle with the Recovery environment nor does it add its drivers to it, since WinRE still showed no reaction to keyboard input after that.I then downloaded the Surface recovery image and created me a Recovery USB stick and copied all files from the recover image onto it. Booting from that stick the keyboard worked (as one would expect...)!
However, I would like to have a working WinRE with me on the built-in SSD and not have to carry that USB stick with me all the time.
What would be needed to carry over the relevant parts/drivers of the recovery image to the built-in Recovery Partition? You mentioned that repairing or rebuilding that image with the correct Surface drivers would be the next step. Could you advise on (or link to) those required steps?
Regards and thanks,
Michael
