How to recover data from Surface Pro that won't turn on

Posted by Tim to BitLocker Recovery on April 25th, 2021

When your Surface Pro goes into BitLocker recovery mode, it could be due to a number of issues. Perhaps the company's password security policy locks users out after a specific number of failed sign in attempts. Or it could be that the PC has encountered an unexpected configuration change, hardware malfunction, or security event.

If you have entered the correct BitLocker recovery key, but Surface BitLocker recovery screen and manage-bde command don't accept it, maybe the Surface Pro's SSD has been corrupted. In that case, you need to recover data from Surface Pro that won't turn on.

If you don't have the correct BitLocker recovery key, there is no way to recover data from Surface Pro that you won't boot, refer to how to unlock BitLocker encrypted drive without password and recovery key?

Tutorial to recover data from Surface Pro that won't turn on:

Step 1: Download iBoysoft Data Recovery WinPE edition to a healthy computer.

Step 2: Initilize your empty USB drive to GPT and then create iBoysoft Data Recovery WinPE bootable media on it due to UEFI boot of Surface Pro.

Step 3: Boot your failed Surface Pro from iBoysoft Data Recovery WinPE bootable media.

Step 4: After starting your Surface Pro from iBoysoft Data Recovery bootable media, choose BitLocker Recovery module.

Choose BitLocker Recovery module in iBoysoft Data Recovery

Step 5: Select the BitLocker encrypted drive and click Next.

If you cannot find your BitLocker encrypted drive, click "Find More Partitions" at the top.

Step 6: Enter the 48-digit BitLocker recovery key and then click OK.

Enter the password or BitLocker recovery key

Step 7: iBoysoft Data Recovery is scanning the data from BitLocker encrypted drive.

Scan lost data from BitLocker encrypted drive

Step 8: After scanning, the lost files will be listed as below window, select the files you need and click Recover to save them to an external drive.

Recover lost data from BitLocker encrypted Surface Pro

After data recovery is done, it is time to reset Surface Pro so that you can use it again.