yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] M i z:
How can I help?

Not sure if this thread is still alive, but I wanted to see what I could do to help out. I am a last semester Computer Engineering student (only 2 classes left :D) and I will have a little bit of down time and was looking for a project to take up. I have a lot of experience with linux-based systems (yay Arch!) and I understand the technical jargon in the documentation you guys have linked. I have read through the thread and will keep you updated on any progress I make. If someone wants to give me a tldr or anything that I should focus on first please let me know.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] TacoLoco:
I would say bring up Android or Win 10 to this device, but I'm just dreaming ;)
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] HackdYourShit:
I Restored my ****tyRT Today and I’m not Jailbroken and my SecureBoot is UNLOCKED?

Hi I’m NEW to the XDA and it’s my first Post, I usually just popped in to download stuff and whatever but now I needed to post this cause I know I stumbled on something that’s never happened before... few days ago I screwed up my ****tyRT on Windows 8.1 RT, I did the jailbreak many times on it and works fine with jailbreak, but installing apps as you know have to be compiled or ported to ARM for them to work, well I’m still learning and I tried installing to many apps to see what worked or not, and I screwed up the tablet so I download a recovery iso and re-flashed it with rufus then deleted it, but today when I turned it on i just wanted to see what the settings said before I jailbreak it today and it’s saying that secureboot is off and I never jail broke it yet or did anything but move some apps over before I ran the jailbreak tool, so I’m baffled and want to know if I should make a backup of this image for the XDA all of us, or did i miss something and it’s unlocked now? And if yous want me to make full backup of this image how do I do it right so the community can have this image and we won’t need to go through all this goldenkey crap? this is a clean install with about 15 apps moved over but haven’t ran anything except just the tool it comes with to extract zip files that’s all, and I opened gpedit and system info to look at the settings before I jailbroke it and saw this and was like what the F... so need help how to make a complete full backup image without screwing this up? Or let me know if this is normal now or something please..... thanks
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Y3K89:
Hopefully, someone will get back to you, i too am interested in this - been messing around and the only thing holding my project back is the secure boot . I have been able too get test mode and unlocking the c drive but thats it
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] ShapeShifter499:
Well I'm cross posting this from the thread here: https://xdaforums.com/windows-8-rt/rt-development/upcoming-tegra-exploit-help-mod-surface-t3775643

Ok I tried this on my Surface RT. I seem to be in RCM mode! APX mode The steps below. I'm not entirely sure what to do from here on. I'm hoping someone can pickup from here.

Power off the device.

When the device is properly shutdown (not sleep mode!) plug in your USB type A to type A plug (it has a male usb on each end) from your Surface USB port into another computer USB port. I did this with a computer running Linux but it should work with any operating system.

It's important you have the cable connected, it seems the RCM APX mode doesn't reestablish a connection if the cable is missing or removed. At least that's what I observed when I unplugged the cable while in RCM APX mode.

With the cable in place hold both the power and the volume up key down simultaneously for a few seconds and then let go of the power while keeping the volume up key held down for a few more seconds then let go.

If successful you should see some sort of USB based "NVIDIA Corp." device appear.

Oh and to get out of RCM APX mode. Just hold the power button down for a long time then release then click it once again to boot as normal. It helps to have the cable still plugged in when you do this so you can see the "NVIDIA Corp." device disconnect. It may kick you into the windows recovery mode after booting from this weird state, just select to boot to Windows RT.

As a side note while in windows recovery I was able to go into the "administrator" account and log in with a blank password. This gave me a CMD with a drive labelled X:\ I think I was in the small recovery OS as opposed to the actual OS, maybe someone can find something interesting poking around here.

EDIT: After some further poking around it seems I'm in a mode known as APX. You can read more about it from here: https://xdaforums.com/wiki/APX_mode Symptoms include nvflash and tegrarcm returning errors like "Resource temporarily unavailable". From what I can gather online, APX mode is the RCM but it's not a sign of a unlock. But there is the aforementioned Tegra vulnerability, someone has to see if that could work here.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] ShapeShifter499:
Oh and I got a USB ID from 'lsusb' in Linux when this was connected. I saw 0955:7130 NVIDIA Corp. in case that helps any.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Y3K89:
Did some reading around and what i gather is that it is part of the ' U-Boot' ? bootloader for tegra 2 and 3 usb driver ?
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] ShapeShifter499:
Yes but I also read that you'd need a key for the encryption of the bootloader when it's locked to make any edits or to be able to write any new loader. MAYBE the Tegra overflow hack could be applied to get around it but I have no idea at this point.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] ShapeShifter499:
People know about this writeup right? It talks about the secureboot and "golden keys". The original page is no longer up but https://archive.org seems to have preserved it well. https://web.archive.org/web/20170604013028/https://rol.im/securegoldenkeyboot/
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Y3K89:
Gather'd that the provisioning system is software dependent in settings, the key being stored in hardware level , software links up with device ID such as the NVIDIA 'lssub' which is what I think the first level of USB stack. Part of the main storage (c drive, USB ports, keyboard) the arm version of windows needs the device id's to load, being which the bootloader is tied too

---------- Post added at 03:27 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:23 AM ----------

What We need...

a write up on a Linux dev board do some J-tag pulls
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] HsuanZ:
I am new guy here. I just wanna know if it is possible to install Linux for surface rt under windows IOT environment? I mean we firstly install windows IOT released by Black Bob, then we install Linux under this system. Has anyone tried this way?
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Qiangong2:
Linux doesn't install on top of Windows, it completely replaces it. The drivers between the two Operating systems are incompatible with each other.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] hummpa:
linux subsystem

I think the guy meant linux subsystem for windows.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Qiangong2:
Either way, it isn't possible
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] puppychow:
So question. The Ubuntu mobile version wouldn't be possible to run on the RT arm processor? I haven't seen mention of it yet.

P.S. not sure if you guys are still toying with the idea anymore. I'm still trying to make this thing useful so I guess a Linux project is about as good as it's going to get.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Qiangong2:
Ubports (the ubuntu mobile version) is configured so that it uses android blobs. We would need to build android first before being able to build ubports.

The steps would be:

-Port Android

-Port Halium

-Port Ubports

And it would have to be in that order. Personally, I would love to see ubports on my Surface 2, but I don't think it will happen.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] puppychow:
Hmm.... Well maybe I will play around with the idea here soon and see if getting this processor to accept Android is possible.... I'll need to get the boot locker gone first and I'm on 8.1 so that's the first step I guess.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Ranomez:
Even if it works it would be fairly useless, yes, you can run ARM32 apps in WinPE but that'll still be limited to the desktop apps ported here, if it works similarly to the Windows 8.0/8.1 WinPE you won't be able to run UWP apps cause there is no explorer, sure, you can probably get the RT 8.1 explorer to work on there and have the Taskbar and everything but I doubt that'll allow it to run UWP apps cause there are quite a number of changes from Metro/Modern apps, unless you can somehow find a ARM32 version of the Windows 10 explorer.

At most this could possibly allow running the RT 8.0 apps that don't work on RT 8.1...or there are big enough changes that nothing will run at all, not the RT 8.0 apps nor the RT 8.1 apps.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] superluig164:
I've seen this is a relatively active forum page lately. I have a decent amount of experience with Linux and a dusty Surface 2 lying around. If there's anything I can do to help progress I'd be very happy to.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] OMGKenny00:
I just found an open source android emulator for pc called Bliss OS, its was build (I think) with people from xda also. I think our best bet is to try to reach them and someone helps them compile it for surface rt since we now have the jailbreak installed. I don't think installing Linux on the surface would be very good, I tried installing Linux in an old computer from 2012 of mine and the amount of troubleshooting I had to do just to get to work properly made me give up on the device, from WiFi not working to display problems to even installing the damn thing on the pc, and the drivers were all messed up, I can only imagine how it would be on the surface, a total nightmare. plus I think the best bet here would be puppylinux since you can run it of a USB stick and I think its lightweight enough for the surface to handle it. although you don't have that much more functions.

Although I can see why it is important to get it to work so it would probably be easier to get it to run android later in time. But people with the surface rt are already desperate enough and most of the posts in xda are dead at this point. so I would really settle with running android apps on this thing, or ppsspp emulator or something to make this thing useful, Linux would just make it more of a disaster or probably even brick the device to alot of people.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] xenom:
You can install Linux in a 1572 surface?? (Surface 2 rt)

Its fully work? How?

Enviado desde mi ZUK Z1 mediante Tapatalk
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] saianjan:
Surface RT model 1516 with windows rt 8.1

I have bricked my Surface RT with win RT 8.1, i had successfully unlocked the secure boot loader and was able boot grub through usb.Now my device does not boot to windows rt 8.1 nor boot from usb to recover it.I am stuck on the Surface logo.Please help me!
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] :
:rolleyes:
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] saianjan:
I need help I know that secure boot is relocked.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] fxsheep:
The arm32 explorer.exe can be found under windows\sysarm32\ from an ARM64 WoA.

Also in the same way we can get nearly 3/4 of arm32 WoA binaries.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Qiangong2:
If you can provide the binaries, we can test and debug it.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] fxsheep:
Nah, you didn't get me. I mean that most of those missing binaries are just in the arm64 version of windows 10 (under system32\sysarm) since the arm64 windows on arm needs to support arm32 exe files.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Ranomez:
Ok so let's say I manage to downgrade from Windows RT 8.1 to 8.0, I can then do the secure boot unlock and then there's that version of Windows 10 IOT Core around which I can boot from the USB stick, my question now is: can I simply create another partition on the NAND where to install that Windows 10 IOT Core build, bcdedit a new entry for IOT and use the USB port for keyboard/mouse?

As for the ARM32 explorer.exe I should actually be able to get my hands on that relatively soon as a friend is planning to buy one of the ARM Windows 10 laptops.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] ke1mura:
lol hax os?

I was playing around with trying to boot the linux image from a usb and came across grub giving me the option to boot into an os labeled "lol hax"... Trying to boot 'lol hax' just sent me to grub2 command line and when I tried to boot linux from there my system just froze... Has anyone encountered this before?

Also by happenstance has anyone made a dtb or dts file for the surface rt?

thanks in advance

nvm about lol hax os...I'm just slow sorry
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Fox_7:
Hello

I downloaded ASUS Transformer Pad TF502T Kernel Code for Android 4.2.1 JB OS (V10.18.0.94) from here: https://www.asus.com/us/supportonly/ASUS%20Transformer%20Pad%20TF502T/HelpDesk_Download/ . It include dts files
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] XDA-00:
Hi. After doing everything and Accepting the secure boot policy screen , still I am unable to run the bcdedit commands . its says that the secure boot policy is protected and cannot be changed.

Is there anything missed?

Please help
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] XDA-00:
Here is one pic.

Does the expiration date of the certificate cause a problem?
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] XDA-00:
How to use the GRUB File ?
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] NOT_KEIGI:
Excuse me

Excuse me

I would like to try it on surface2, but unfortunately I can not run it because it is Windows RT 8.1.

So I think you need a recoveryimage to get back to Windows RT8, what should I do?

I am Japanese. I use Google Translate because I can not speak English well

すいません

私はsurface２でそれを試みたいのですが、残念ながらWindowsRT８．１なため、実行することができません。

そこで、WindowsRT８に戻すためのrecoveryimageが必要になると思うのですが、どうすればよいでしょう

私は日本人です。英語がうまくしゃべれないため、Google翻訳を利用しています
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] Chinpokomon:
It would seem this is just for 8.1, right? If you have 8, there isn't a patch which breaks our jailbreak yet? I took one firmware update on my Surface RT, but I'm trying to figure out if as long as I'm still on 8 that I'll be able to disable Secure Boot and unlock the drive. I'm cautiously optimistic that I might still be in the clear.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] alexenferman:
Is there any way to install android on it?
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] manicmeerkat:
I have been following similar posts for about 2 years trying hard to come up with something... If you'll bare with me, I am trying to keep an active thread...

I recently found out that it is possible to erase completely the drive and write stuff to a clean partition using diskpart commands and xcopy...

If using this information, is it possible to have a live usb copied to the primary hdd partition to effectively boot from the copied files? it would have to act like a flash drive/USB because (to my very limited knowledge) live USB disks run FAT32 to be able to boot mulitple systems...

In theory, could it (a surface RT craplet) be formatted to FAT32 and then copy a live USB to it using the Recovery CMD?

(in order for me to have done this before wiping the drive again, I had to have a microsd inserted and then a WinRT 8.0 NorthAmerica recovery drive created on USB... and I booted into the recovery drive holding volume down on powerup selecting language, then troubleshooting route to the cmd... then list disked the drives to find where my files would be ( it is much much easier to have 2 different sized flash/sd drives in my system it showed the 2 same sized ones I initially started with as the exact same size and available space which later caused confusion... then attemtpted to xcopy the contents of microsd to the internal hdd...)

it finished copy without error, but when i tried to load, it briefly showed the illuminated surface logo center screen, and then immediately powered off...

I hope this comes as a help to some and please forgive me as a non leveled member, they wont let me upload or link to any of my findings...

i can be reached at the following without spaces:

d a r e a l a n g e l c o l o n @ g m a i l . c o m

thank you all for your help and continued expertise and attempts.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] manicmeerkat:
In Follow - up

So my device current status -

-power on

-surface logo

immediately powers down

Using WinRT 8.0 NorthAmerica Recovery Drive

volume down + power button

release power button while still holding volume down

surface logo

release volume down

wait

english -> us -> troubleshoot -> command prompt

diskpart -> listdisk -> my internal surface hd is 0 (32gb registering 29gb and free is 29gb) and my recovery drive is 1 (16gb which registering 14 with 0 free)

select disk 0 -> clean -> convert gpt

(i essentially have an empty drive that flashes surface and then shuts down)

here is another of my questions:

insert micro usb with an ARM compatible Linux...

is there a way to format said linux to have a GPT structure that would allow for "Xcopy" to clone the microsd to the internal harddrive?

what would be the way to image that linux to the micro?

(not that it would be feasible, but is there a Mac OS that would do the same thing as a hackintosh build)

I would love to bring back life to these devices...

Thank you kindly for your research and thoughts on the matter...
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] tomgeniewang:
hopefully someone can work it out during the global lock-down period. Wish everyone well.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] EnderDev:
Heres a massive dump of everything I know (mostly google and trial and error)

Was able to downgrade my surface rt 1 to win 8 (perhaps i was missing an update that locked out the old install?) anyways:

https://archive.org/details/SurfaceRT80_201411 Heres the windows8 image. Format a usb as fat32, must be 8gb+, extract the zip to the root of the drive.

How to boot recovery media on a surface device that wont boot windows (not bricked):

Hold vol down, press power, let go of vol down when you see the surface logo. If it can boot the media itll continue (takes a minute, if it cant boot anything itll just shut itself off)

Quick thing about the cpu architecture:

The surfacert is running a Tegra 3 T30L CPU (Same exact chip as the Nexus 7 2012) (source source2)

The Tegra 3's architecture is Cortex-A9 (source)

And the Cortex-A9 architecture is basically arm7a (source)

I could be missing something, but there's always the chance it helps :fingers-crossed:
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] coherixmatts:
Thank for posting that [MENTION=10768985]CrackTheSurface[/MENTION]. I also have been looking into this topic again recently.

Some more info that might help with creating a devicetree. There is a "Surface RT 2 DSDT" decompiled ACPI table on Ben's GitHub over here: https: (slash slash) gist.github.com/imbushuo/99d667424b8a6d0717584f454c543aac

As you mentioned, you can replace BOOT.EFI with anything that is properly formed for armv7. I compiled Grub 2.04 and it booted just fine on a Surface 2. You can also boot into a UEFI shell using shell.efi from here:

https: (slash slash)github.com/tianocore/edk2/tree/UDK2018/ShellBinPkg/UefiShell/Arm

I have both Surface RT and Surface 2 available for testing and can maybe contribute some effort. Sorry I deleted my account a while ago and can't post links now.
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] CrackTheSurface:
[MENTION=10784299]coherixmatts[/MENTION] Thank you very much for sharing this information with us. Maybe you have some more information about compiling Grub properly for arm32?

Where did you get this information? i don't think there are any links out there which I missed and i took me a while (half year) to understand how the surface boots and which files serves which purpose.

At the moment i am setting up a little webapge (I will post the link i a few days when it is filled with some content) to document all the things i know and the progress i will (hopefully) make this year.

I am sure Linux wouldn't be even useful on such an old hardware, but after so many years I just want a prove of concept.

It should be good enough for office and web stuff. (Until now it was used to view some pdfs at university)

My primary goal is to learn as much as possible about Linux low level stuff.

My next step is to downgrade and Jailbreak my surface(1) which i disassembled to find a serial port. (I really think there is one on the J14 connnector, if someone has further informations pls share it with us)

But first i will test grub and uefi-shell for prove of concept on my second already jailbreaked surface(2).

If this works, I will try to compile Linux with EFI flags including EFI_STUB.

If EFI_STUB is configured correctly, it should be bootable without GRUB, eliminating possible error sources.

Also Linux should be able to use ACPI information, therefore a devicetree will become unnecessary. (as far as I understood)

Nevertheless should it be possible to export the DSDT from ACPI with Uefi-shell or some custom efi application.

If this works fine we only need a rootFileSystem. Nvidia provides a sample with drivers and codecs which is the way to go i guess (link is in previous post)

Maybe Linux will boot to a point where we can use USB->Serial converter for further debugging.

I you are interested in working together with me leave a PM :)
[Windows RT Development and Hacking] alexenferman:
I am interested in this project but I don't have that much knowledge on building Linux with no device tree or kernel. By the way, secureboot is already cracked. No need for Windows RT 8.0. If you check the other threads on the Surface RT, a Windows 10 ARM build was leaked for this device. I want more to build android for this device. I know I could have bought a android tablet, but my dad liked this tablet but soon found out that the operating system and apps were not good. If we only have to build a device tree and compile linux or android using a prebuilt kernel, that would be easy. But this is a device that shipped with Windows RT. So we have to rewrite the drivers and everything else if I am not mistaking? Or maybe we could port?

It would be a nice project!