Alternate boot drive fail after win 10 upgrade to Inspiron 580

[chuck46]

Hello,
After upgrade Dell Inspiron 580 to win 10 the system boot option F12 seems disabled and the box will not boot from the alternate drives (cd then USB) enabled on the motherboard. F2 still brings up the system motherboard edit.
The failure to boot from cd defeats my drive imaging backup software.
I am unable to find a secure boot option on the motherboard, so I suspect the issue is something else.
Any help will be appreciated.

 

[Saltgrass]

I don't know what type of system a Dell 580 is so could you describe it and its age? Knowing if the system is UEFI capable makes a difference.

When you use the F12 key you are still able to see the boot devices and make a choice? If not, try hitting the key earlier that you might think you need to. If the F2 works the F12 should also since they are not controlled by the OS but the bios.

If you can get into the bios, can you select the boot device from there?

 

[md51]

Had the same problem yesterday. Wanted to do a clean reinstall of Windows 10 on a Dell Inspiron 580 by booting from a USB key containing the installation media. F2 got me into BIOS but nothing I could do would make it boot from the USB. As for F12, the message to press F12 was visible during boot but did not work until ...

Here's what solved it for me:

Restart Windows 10 in safe mode using Advanced Startup Options
See Option One - Steps 1 to 5 in http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2304-safe-mode-start-windows-10-a.html#option1

During restart, F12 finally did work and I was able the get the Boot Menu.

Hope this helps.

 

[chuck46]

Problem Solved. Kind of. Here's what I learned. It only applies to Dell Inspiron 580, not to a newer xps. In win10 select settings, update & security, recovery, advanced start up, restart now. Computer reboots and that time only the F12 is alive and will bring up boot choices. If I bail at that point and boot from system disk, the next and subsequent time the system boots, the F12 is disabled. Sounds crazy but it acts as if win10 edits the bios to defeat the F12 key under normal conditions unless specifically told to from within windows. Perhaps something to do with the keyboard driver but other keyboards acted the same way. This may be some kind of security feature to prevent someone from sneaking into a system by booting from an external device. I can only assume if the system totally blows up, I can reload the bare system somehow, go through the system recovery and update the system image. Thanks to all for your ideas.