Read here on my post on upgrading Surface Pro “1” to Windows 8.1
In the mail App for last few weeks Hotmail.com mails are not getting downloaded. In Accounts option it says there is a certificate error and I couldn’t find a way to fix it. This Hotmail ID is my primary Microsoft Account used to setup Surface Pro, which means I am allowed to remove it and reconfigure.
Before I tried anything else to fix it, I wanted to make a system image & recovery disc. I couldn’t do a recovery disc. I got an error saying can’t find recovery media. I tried to use Reset PC option, I got the same error. For reasons unknown to me, I have a Recovery Partition of 7GB in my Surface Pro but it doesn’t contain anything. So I was left with the option of creating a new recovery disc using standard Windows 8.1 ISO file. The process to do that (to use ReagentC.Exe and extracting Install.WIM from ISO) is outlined here in detail.
Once I did the above, I reinstalled Windows 8.1 using the standard ISO file by mounting it and running setup. This meant all the Surface Pro specific drivers/firmware didn’t make it in the fresh installation. I needed to go to Microsoft and download Surface Pro Driver Pack and install individual drivers that were broken.
Now I have everything working fine in my Surface Pro.