Creating a recovery USB stick

You never know when you are goring to need it or if you are ever going to need it. But without any doubt it's a good idea to have a way to recover your Surface PRO 3 from a USB memory stick. But for that you need to create a Recovery USB stick and this is how it can be done according to Microsoft's Surface site.

Create the recovery drive

1:	Connect the power supply to Surface and plug into an electrical outlet.
2:	Insert your USB drive into the USB port on your Surface.
3:	Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, and then tap Search. (If you're using a mouse, point to the upper-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer down, and then click Search.)
4:	In the search box, enter recovery, and in the search results, tap or click Recovery, and then tap or click Create a recovery drive.
5:	In the User Account Control dialog box, tap or click Yes.
6:	Tap or click to select Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive, and then, tap or click Next.
7:	Tap or click the USB drive you want to use, and then tap or click Next.
8:	Tap or click Create. The recovery image and necessary recovery tools will be copied to your USB drive. Your Surface must stay awake during the copy process, which will take 10 to 15 minutes.
9:	After the recovery tools are copied, do one of the following: Tap or click Finish if you want to keep the recovery tools on your Surface. Tap or click Delete the recovery partition if you want to remove the recovery tools from Surface and free up disk space. To confirm, tap or click Delete, and when removal is complete, tap or click Finish.
10:	Remove your USB drive from Surface and keep it in a safe place. It's best not to use the recovery drive to store other files or data.

Yom will need a 8 GB USB stick because the recovery files use a little more than 4GB.

Train the Surface Pro 3 to recognize your Handwriting

I thought that this wonderful feature was missing from Windows 8.1 but it's not.

Chrome in High DPI

The Surface Pro 3 comes with a high DPI display that looks really good. But no all Applications are proposed to use this hardware feature and when that happens instead a very sharp view you get a  blurry view. That's the case with Google Chrome.  Of course, who else.

But there is a solution explained a this page.

Basically your should create this registry key:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Chrome\Profile]
"high-dpi-support"=dword:00000001

Microsoft Surface Team's Tips

Microsoft Surface Team just published A very interesting article with some good tips and recommendations.

Hyper V could messup your connected standby.

I just learned here that enabling Hyper V in your Surface PRO 3 stops the connected standby service, something that you really don't want to miss.

 

 

Here is a workaround explained.

The Surface Pro 3 is here

Today is June 20th and as promised Microsoft has released the Surface PRO 3. But what probably no many users interested in this device knew is that BestBuy also started selling it today.

One of the many marketing mistakes that MS still does. One of the advantages of buying the Surface PRO 3 at BestBuy is the wonderful trade in program that this store offers. I brought my Surface 2 and received a $263 gift card that I applied against the purchase of the Surface Pro 3.

Why to buy a Surface PRO 3

Here is a funny video that shows why is better to buy a Surface PRO 3 than an iPad.

If Windows Defender Definition Update fails

"Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x80070643: Definition Update for Windows Defender"

In the last few days the automatic update of the definition file for Windows Defender has been failing in my Surface 2. Troubleshooting the issue I found that you can install the definition manually even in a Windows RT device by visiting this site and downloading the proper file, in this case of a Surface 2 you should download the one under Windows Defender for Windows 8.1 ARM.

Update: at the end the issue was resolved by deleting the c:\Windows\temp folder. The whole procedure is explained here.

Surface 2 drivers won't update

If your Surface 2 suffers from display crashes, it doesn't come back from standby and your event log and reliability report looks really bad. Then you should read this thread from Microsoft's forum.

Maps Preview

Microsoft has recently released Maps Preview. The feature that really separate this apps from tether maps Apps is the 3D view of some cities land marks. It's known when MS will have at least most of the cities using this feature but so far what I have seen is really impressive. Just check the below pictures.