Windows 10: How can I create a rescue USB stick for a Surface Pro 3 ?

The basic problem is that I have a Surface Pro 3 that is stuck in a loop trying to uninstall a recent update. It tries for some time, then reboots, then enters the same state.


I suspect that there is insufficient free space on the built-in SSD C:. I had thought to boot another OS, then move files to the SD card D: or to external storage.


I tried booting a CentOS Linux rescue disk, which would normally let me mount a drive, but it's ignored. By holding volume:+ with power up I got the UEFI screen and tried turning TPM off and changing the boot order to network,USB,SSD for a PXE boot but both the network and USB are ignored - no WiFi prompt for instance. I tried a USB Ethernet adapter, but it didn't work either.


I have a Linux desktop, and a laptop with Windows 8. I found instructions to create a Surface recovery image. I downloaded the image, but it's not an ISO or image I can just copy to the USB stick, it's a zipfile. I ran "Create a recovery drive" on the Windows laptop and was able to create a bootable USB drive. I unzipped the recovery image onto the drive and was then able to boot that on the Surface Pro.


I got an error message

\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD status 0xc000000f
boot configuration data for your PC is missing or contains errors.


I can't extract the configuration data from the Surface because I can't boot it.


I tried both the recovery images for " Windows 8.1" and "Windows 10 Version 1511" but they both gave the same error.


Is there somewhere I can download an actual bootable image or ISO I can copy to a USB stick with "dd" ?

:)