Unsurprisingly the Windows 10 Technical Preview (build 10130) was very unstable on my Surface Pro 3 128GB/i5/4GB – primarily I was plagued with Intel Video Driver crashes, plain grey/white screens and WiFi issues – hey it is a technical preview after-all! Restoring back to a previous version of Windows (i.e. Windows 8.1) requires recovery media, luckily Microsoft supply this for you, as outlined in the following location: https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-service-and-recovery/downloadablerecoveryimage
Once you have download the image use the following instructions to create the media:
- Insert your FAT32 USB drive into the USB port of your Surface or PC. For Surface Pro models and Surface 3, your USB drive should be at least 16 GB.
- From the desktop, open File Explorer.
- Tap and hold (or right-click) on the USB drive, and choose Format.
- Select FAT32 as the file system and enter a Volume label (for example, Recovery) to name the USB drive, and tap or click Start.
- Tap or click OK to erase the contents of the USB drive.
- Tap or click OK when the format is complete.
- Double click the recovery image that you downloaded to open and unzip (extract) the files.
- Next, drag the files from the compressed folder to the USB drive you formatted.
Finally, follow instructions here to restore the device using the recovery media: https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-service-and-recovery/usbrecovery
Let’s hope these kinks are worked out in the final release 🙂