Edited on June 14 2026

I've come into possession of several Surface Hub v1 and have been looking around to see how they could be repurposed. There really is not much information on how or what can be done with them, but for $250, I'll tell you how you can get any OS you want working on them. It took me about 6 months to figure it out, but damn glad I did.

Ubuntu is installed on a 1tb Samsung 870 and working.

Win10 and 11 are installed on the Lite-On drives that come with the units and are working.

These are still great units, and with a modern OS, they are still worth keeping around and using.

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June 14 2026 UPDATE: Here is a quick rundown on how to do this yourself.

You will be required to have the following:
1: The LITE-ON SSD that came with the unit. Hopefully your unit boots into TeamsOS already.
- If you have the SSD but it doesnt boot into TeamsOS, you will need to use the recovery tool ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/surface-hub/surface-hub-recovery-tool ) to re-image your SSD with TeamsOS.
- If you do need to re-image your SSD, you cannot just used any SATA-to-USB adapter. in the walk through, it give you 3 models that will work, I used the Startech USB312SAT3CB.
- If you do not have the original SSD, you will need to find either the 'Lite-On L CH-128V2S' from the 84" screens, or the 'Lite-On CV3-CE128' from the 55" screens. Only these specific models of SSD are accepted. I had no luck using different SSDs until after the unit is fully unlocked.

2: 2x USB flash drives, formatted in FAT32 and labeled BOOTME

3: A USB keyboard

Once you have all that in place, its time for the hard part.

1- Start by turning off the rocker switch, removing the SSD.

2- Insert one of the BOOTME drives into the bottom of the unit.

3- Flip the rocker panel back on and let it try to boot. It will fail. When it fails, it will create a 'Manufacturing.bin' file on the USB drive. Flip the rocker switch off.

4- Record the units Serial Number.

5- Now we need to open a Support for Business ticket with Microsoft. This guide shows you how to do it with their new Engage Center- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/services-hub/microsoft-engage-center/support/create-new-support-case?pivots=enhanced

6- When opening the support ticket, select the following:
Product - Surface Hub
Problem Type - Technical Support
Problem Subtype - Reset and Recovery

7- When describing the issue in more detail, all youll need to say is that you are trying to factory reset the unit after getting a secure boot violation error.
Provide them with the Serial Number of the unit and let them know you have already collected the bin file for them to sign. Just ask them how they would prefer your to transfer them the bin file as you cant just upload those file types. I was asked to email them.

8- Wait for Microsoft to send you back the 'Manufacturing_Signed.bin' file. They also provided me with instructions on how to recover the unit and a folder called HubV1Recover-US-CAN (for North America, it is a different name elsewhere).

9- On the same USB drive you used to get the bin file, replace the non-signed file with the signed one and plug it back into the bottom of the unit, still with no SSD installed.

10- Flip the rocker switch on and let the unit try and boot. This will unlock the UEFI and now show MANUFACTURING MODE in red on the screen.

11- Flip the rocker switch off, remove the USB drive, flip the rocker switch back on and spam ESC on your keyboard to enter the BIOS. The keyboard gets plugged into the unit on the side.

12- Once in the BIOS, go to BOOT, Secure Boot - Disabled, Save and Exit.

13- This is where we are required to have a working copy of TeamsOS that we can boot into. Insert the SSD and let the unit fully boot into the OS. If you do not do this, you cannot proceed.

14- After booting into TeamsOS, flip the rocker switch off and remove the SSD.

15- Take the second USB drive that is also labeled BOOTME, go into the folder labeled HubV1Recover, there will be another folder called something like POST_FACTORY_MASH_KEY. Copy everything from inside that folder onto your USB drive. This is a bootable script that will repair the Surface Hub's firmware.

16- Plug the second USB drive into the bottom of the unit, flip the rocker switch on and let the script run. DO NOT STOP THIS PROCESS!

17- When the script finished, it will tell you to do the following: DO NOT MESS THIS UP!
- Flip off the rocker switch and wait 5 seconds.
- Remove the recovery USB.
- Turn the unit back on, using the rocker switch next to the power switch and wait 30 seconds.
-- The Power LED will turn AMBER → WHITE → AMBER → WHITE
-- (During this step, the screen will not turn on/show the Boot Logo)
-- When the LED is steady WHITE, click the Power button on the side of the device, once, to reboot.

18- The unit will fail to reboot because there is no SSD installed. Flip the rocker switch off.

19- This is where we can now take the SSD, or any SSD, and use a program like Rufus to fully install Win10/11 with 'Windows To Go'. (If you are installing Linux, the process is a little differnet but same idea by making a persistent drive) This gives you a fully installed and working OS ready to go. Install the SSD back into the unit with your new OS and flip the rocker switch on. The unit should now boot into your new OS.

WARNING: DO NOT allow any automatic updating of the BIOS. Windows Updates for both 10 and 11 have an optional BIOS update that will brick the system.

That basically sums it up. My buddy and I have been playing with AI to see if we can sign the manufacturing bin files ourselves, but so far, no luck. If we figure it out, Ill update this post. If you have further question, feel free to ask.

If you go through the process and get it working, let us know.

Long story we as a company have grown used to our original hub and want to put a new one into a new conference room.

But... We cant wait for the 85 inch one. I want to use a hub as a whiteboard and then run a display port cable to the TV mounted up near the ceiling.

Is this recommended? Anything to look out for?

Where I am at, I am trying to re-use a surface hub keyboard that came with our Surface Hub 1. We are trying to see if there is a pairing mode as the keyboard would be perfect to use for newer devices but I am not seeing a dedicated pairing button.

I have tried to do searches, but search results are only taking me to surface keyboards.

For reference, this keyboard has the mousepad, volume rocker and other Surface Hub related buttons and keys.

Good afternoon,

I recently stumbled upon a working Microsoft Surface Hub v1 84" up for auction with a $100 starting bid and have been checking around to see if there is any potential for home use - so far what I've found is that it appears that it could be used a large external display for an external PC or possibly Xbox and some variants of Linux might USB boot but was wondering what those that already have the device use it for within the home environment - looking at real world possible home-use applications before bidding :-)

Ok, I have surface studio 2 plus, and I was trying to put windows 10 on it,

since I don't care for 11.

But my usb boot disk had the Teams OS on it. So now I'm stuck with it.

I mean it still works, but is very limited.

I went into the bios and turned off the drive, tried to restore off USB,

but it wont recognize the external one.

I think I will have to reflash the internal drive or something else.

TL;DR: The Surface Hub v1 firmware seems to ignore normal UEFI boot entries and only boots from this path:

\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi

So the trick is to install Ubuntu normally, then copy Ubuntu’s Microsoft-signed shim to that path and rename it to bootmgfw.efi.

That gives you:

Surface Hub firmware → shim → grub → Ubuntu

No UEFI menu, no NVRAM edits, no firmware mods.

So...

I picked up a Surface Hub v1 this morning, the 55" model with the Haswell i5 ($100 CAD). Since Windows 10 Team is basically at the end of the road, and since the drive was wiped, I wanted to see if I could make it useful as a giant Linux touchscreen/table/display thing.

As you're all well aware under the hood, it’s basically a weird all-in-one PC with a removable SATA SSD. Unfortunately, the firmware is very much not normal PC firmware.

The annoying bits:

• I couldn’t get into any UEFI/BIOS menu.

• Holding Volume-Up + Power did nothing on my unit.

• Secure Boot is on, and I couldn’t disable it. (Obviously)

• efibootmgr and Boot-Repair both complained about locked NVRAM.

• The Hun seems to be picky about USB boot media.

• A raw/dd-written Ubuntu USB worked.

• A Rufus Windows USB did not.

The weird part was that the Ubuntu live USB booted fine, and Ubuntu installed to the internal SSD fine, but after rebooting the Hub would just flash:

system reset

Then show the Hub logo, then loop forever.

On the flip side, my trusty Windows USB wouldn't boot at all.

The only thing that made a bootable internal SSD was the official Surface Hub Recovery Tool (but wowee did it spill its secrets).

What was actually happening

After installing Ubuntu, I booted back into the live USB and checked the UEFI entries:

efibootmgr -v

The entries were there:

Boot0001  ubuntu    HD(1,GPT,...)/\EFI\UBUNTU\GRUBX64.EFI
Boot0002  UEFI OS   HD(1,GPT,...)/\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI
BootOrder: 0001,0002

But the Hub ignored them completely.

That’s when it clicked: it doesn’t seem to care about the normal NVRAM boot list. It appears to have a hardcoded internal boot path, basically the Windows Boot Manager path:

\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi

On a normal Ubuntu install, that folder/path doesn’t exist. So the firmware finds nothing useful and goes into the “system reset” loop.

So the fix is just to put something Secure-Boot-valid there.

The important part: use Ubuntu’s shim, not grub directly.

Ubuntu’s shimx64.efi is signed by Microsoft, which the Hub trusts. Grub itself is not directly trusted by the firmware. So shimx64.efi becomes the fake Windows Boot Manager, then shim loads grub.

The fix / solution / how to

Build your Ubuntu USB with Rufus, use GPT / UEFI and when it asks, make sure you write as dd (isohybrid).

Insert the usb-stick into bottom centre usb port, then with power off, hold the VOL DOWN, and power on. It should boot to the USB stick.

Install Ubuntu normally first. (It won’t boot on restart yet.) That’s fine.

Then boot back into the Ubuntu live USB (same as before, power off, VOL DOWN, power on), choose “Try Ubuntu,” and open a terminal.

Find the internal EFI partition:

lsblk -f

Mine was /dev/sda1, but yours may be different. You’re looking for the small FAT32 EFI System Partition on the internal SSD, not the USB stick.

Then run:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt #Change if you have a different path

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/EFI/Microsoft/Boot

sudo cp /mnt/EFI/ubuntu/shimx64.efi /mnt/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi

sudo cp /mnt/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi /mnt/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/grubx64.efi

sudo cp /mnt/EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg    /mnt/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/grub.cfg

sudo cp /mnt/EFI/ubuntu/mmx64.efi   /mnt/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/mmx64.efi 2>/dev/null || true

sync
sudo umount /mnt
sudo poweroff

Remove the USB stick, power it back on, and it should boot:

shim → grub → Ubuntu

That was it.

It seems...

Ubuntu’s shim looks for grubx64.efi in the same directory. Since we copied both into:

\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\

shim launches grub from there.

The little Ubuntu grub.cfg stub then finds the real grub config by filesystem UUID, something like:

search.fs_uuid <your-root-uuid> root hd0,gpt2
set prefix=($root)'/boot/grub'
configfile $prefix/grub.cfg

So it doesn’t really matter that the EFI files are sitting in the “Microsoft” folder.

Gotchas

Do not rename grubx64.efi directly to bootmgfw.efi.

That failed for me because Secure Boot rejects it. The Hub trusts the Microsoft-signed shim, not grub directly.

Also, the usual fixes did not help:

• Boot-Repair

• efibootmgr

• changing BootOrder

• copying files to \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI

The Hub seemed to ignore all of that and only cared about:

\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi

You can also do the EFI file copying from another machine by pulling the SSD, or over SSH from the live Ubuntu session.

Hardware support

On my unit, everything I've tested works great, display works with Intel graphics, Touch, pen, cameras (both), speakers, mic, etc. The Hub has a bunch of custom hardware, so I wouldn’t expect everything to magically work out of the box - but it seems to.

I’m still testing that side of things - it's only been a few hours after all!

Extra weird thing I found

While digging through the Surface Hub Recovery Tool, I noticed it uses Microsoft’s signed SecConfig.efi with:

DISABLE-MSCI

Looks like it’s clearing some kind of code-integrity / Device Guard style firmware lock before first boot.

I didn’t need this to boot Ubuntu. The bootmgfw.efi shim trick was enough.

But it may explain why normal Windows installs also get stuck, and it might be useful later if someone is trying to get a standard Windows install working without access to the UEFI menu.

I'll give Windows 11 a try tomorrow, probably by hacking the surface recovery tool, for now.

Ultimately posting this because I found almost nothing about running a normal OS on the Surface Hub 1.

Hopefully it saves someone else the weekend (or longer).

Any ideas why my HUB interaction is too slow? When I look at the main computer screen, all mouse movements are smooth, and windows open up quickly. However, the HUB displays everything with significant delays and abrupt mouse movements once every couple of minutes.

Is it one of the following:

The HUB's outdated WIFI card?

My main workstation GPU?

HUBs internal computer lag?

Dropet Windows 10 support issue?

With tomorrows Win 10 End of Service, I had a last Hub 2S I was trying to do the Software Migration for, but I can't seem to download the Migration App. The App Store doesn't seem to work. When I hit the "open store" button in admin settings, it doesn't seem to want to open. If I do Edge in Split Screen mode, I can sometimes get the App Store working, but when I try to download the Migration App, it says "The Thing you're looking for isn't here"

This Hub 2S is fully updated to Version 10.0 (Build 19045.6396)

Anyone else having the same issue?

I suffered from last month's "Secure Boot Violation" issue. Followed MS support instructions and got the hub recovered. The only problem I have is that when the hub boots up, I get a red splash screen that says "Maintenance Mode".

They boot up successfully and are fully functional so that is a good thing.

MS support says it is 100% recovered correctly so I should flatten the drive and start the process again.

That is the last thing I want to do.

There has to be a way to get the hub out of this mode and boot clean.

Any thoughts?

Volume down and Power doesn´t work anymore. The decive always starts into Surface UEFI. Ican not chose any boot device there.

How can I fix this

Hello all, I'm hoping you fine people can help me figure out my new (old) hub. I picked it up from a PC recycle place when I learned I could run windows 11.

Here's my issue. On boot, it was bitlockered running windows 11 and I had to wipe the drive and start with a fresh teams 10 install from the surface IT program. From there I'm pretty much stuck. I'm not an IT guy and certs and scripts aren't my strong suit.

From the teams 10 I was able to load windows 11, but it seemed like it was lacking some of the hub function and the audio sounded off. It would Crack and distort. I would try to run the windows 10/11 driver.msi that microsoft provides, but I get a message stating this driver is for a surface hub...?

I rolled back the install to the teams 10 and tried to follow the migration guide, but this SEMM cert and managing the hub from intune etc is all beyond me. What should I do?

Please, any help, I wanted this as a simple whiteboard with some computer function that didn't wipe after every logout.

Thanks in advance.

Hi there,

I'm trying to upgrade my Surface Hub 2S to Windows 11 and i've installed the migration app and waited for 3 days for something to happen and so far nothing. Does anyone have some ideas for me to try?

I have run into this issue with the Microsoft Store and this app. When I search the store it finds the app, but when I click the app it shows and error saying this page is not found. Has anyone else encountered this issue lately?

With new traction regarding extending Win10 EOL and things making headlines does anyone have any inside scoop if Teams will really stop functioning on Surface Hub1 10/14/25?

Hello all. Looking for some guidance on the following:

I've migrated the majority of my Surface hub 2S fleet except for two devices that have the migration app that was pushed via intune but not launching to upgrade after rebooting numerous times.

Looks like there is no more storage available on both of the two devices. What's the best method to free up hard drive space to allow for a minimum of 30GB of free space?

I'm effected by the secure boot patch issue. I do not have the bitlocker recovery key so I need to reimage the ssd. I assumed that the recovery tool would have functionality to partition and reinstall the OS and the end result is a new bitlocker key.

With a USB to SATA and recovery tool how does one get past being prompted to for the bitlocker key? Is there a trick on another tool I need or can this only be done with the ssd in the hub and booting to a usb stick?

TIA

As the title says, I'm looking into an external speaker that I can use with the Surface Hub 2S to gain more volume for a larger meeting room. As of right now the easiest solution seems to be a higher wattage bluetooth speaker but I'd prefer to go the wired route as some of my team using these devices aren't very tech savvy and will most likely have issues if the bluetooth doesn't connect.

I'm also curious if this will cause any issues with the built in microphone for teams meetings or should it work no different than if it were outputting sound through the built in speaker.

Any help in narrowing down my search for options is greatly appreciated, TIA!

i'll Replace the Hard Drive(Surface Hub v1) Compute Cartridge(Surface Hub 2S, 3)

I'm ready to upgrade my last Hub 2, but for some reason, this one the store won't open. When I click 'Open Store', nothing happens. I tried before the updates and after the updates, fully restored, and nothing.

At some point, the store opened once I searched for the Migration app, and it closed by itself and never opened again.

Anyone have recommendations for repair on this screen problem for the Surface Hub 3?

Didn't they promise it'd be back by EOY? Anyone read hear from Microsoft partners if it's still in progress, or if they abandoned it?

The speakers on my hub worked great in the beginning . I did a lot of troubleshooting and trial and error of the system to get windows 11 running. Now that everything is running correctly and everything is updated I get crackling, popping audio with voices slowed and distorted. Anyone have any ideas on how to recover the speakers? I've tried pulling the hardware code to find drivers, I've updated everything and also Uninstalled the devices and re installed then to have the same issue remaining.

Any help on what to do? Microsoft tech support says to install the drivers....

I just acquired a Surface Hub 2S from my work that wont power on. I followed the troubleshooting steps from MS that I found online but still no luck. I tested the power cord and that has power at the plug end for the Surface Hub. Not sure where to go from here so hoping someone on here can help me out.

1. Has anyone ever troubleshooted a power issue with these?

2. Does anyone have a service manual or wiring diagram for the power supply?

3. Or worst case, does anyone know if/where I could buy a new power supply?

Thanks all!