Downgrading a Microsoft Surface Device to Windows 10
The Surface Go 2 is a surprisingly good Windows 10 tablet!
It’s also a frustratingly slow Windows 11 tablet. I got the go-ahead from the rest of the household to reinstall Windows 10 on it.
My big concern was that the Surface Go 2 is a very specific hardware device, and I wasn’t sure just booting to the most recent Windows 10 installation image would find all the drivers, especially the pen support. So I did a little digging, and found that Microsoft provides recovery images for the Surface line (and not just the tablets and laptops), much like Android manufacturers (sometimes) provide images to reset their devices to a known working version.
Setting Up for Setup
You have to log in with a Microsoft account, and you have to provide the serial number of the device you want to reinstall. At the moment, you can still download an installer for either Windows 10 or Windows 11 (at least for some Surface tablets, including the Go 2). I wouldn’t count on them keeping the older images available after (checks calendar) next week, so move fast and grab a copy just in case you need it later on.
It’s a little weird: You don’t download a bootable image, you download a zip file. Then you use some Windows 10/11 box to create a bootable USB recovery drive, and then copy the contents of the zip file over, replacing whatever recovery system your own box set up.
Creating and using a USB recovery drive for Surface
Then you power the tablet on while holding down the down volume button (again, similar to booting an Android device to its recovery image), and go through the options until you find “Recover from a drive,” and reinstall Windows from there. (It’ll also ask for a Bitlocker recovery key to unlock the drive, but you’re going to wipe it anyway, so you can just skip unlocking it.)
And then you wait.
And then you log in, and it’ll be really slow while it downloads however many years of Windows 10 updates since the image you reverted it to, and you wait for those to install, and then it’ll be fast again!
Extension
If you have decided to downgrade, you may want to look into the extra year of security updates through October 2026.
Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU)
It’s a one-time $30 purchase that you can use with up to 10 devices. I’ve enrolled three: the Surface, the gaming PC, and the Windows partition on my dual-boot desktop. And there are ways to qualify for the program for free, like if you’ve ever backed up your settings to the cloud. Sometimes Windows Update forgets to show you the offer, in which case you might be able to get it to re-check eligibility.