Thank you for the good suggestion, AndreTen, will do.
It could, I suppose, have been that the other thing that I did, holding down the power button for 60 seconds, was actually what enabled access to the BIOS---I did these two actions (move HDMI cable and hold down power button) just a few minutes apart during the troubleshooting process, both of them right before the access to the BIOS became possible---but I will certainly do as you suggest. Thanks again!
I'm glad you're finally making some progress. NOTHING is worse than a semi-bricked PC that just won't do anything useful. Hopefully, you'll be able to get yourself a running OS one of these days!
Keep at it, and you're sure to get it sorted out.
--Ed--
OK, here's the latest:
- USB ports are enabled in BIOS.
- Under the Security tab of BIOS, there is no reference to USB ports; however, under the Advanced tab there is an entry for USB Configuration, and in that setting both the Front and Rear USB ports are shown as Enabled.
- I decided to move the monitor's HDMI cable back to the discrete graphic card port, to see what would happen, and found that the BIOS setup (F2) and boot options menu (F12) are both accessible. I tested this thoroughly, rebooting several times, and was still able to access the BIOS and boot menu. So, it seems that either holding down the power button for 60 seconds or some unknown factor/fluke is what enabled the PC to provide access to the BIOS and boot menu.
I have also found that when I have a bootable disc in the DVD drive, that disc shows up in the boot options menu.
Also, there is, in the BIOS, an option for "File Browser Add Boot Option", which will show a disc in the DVD drive if one is present but does *not* show my USB thumb drive with my Win 10 Pro install files when that is plugged in. Is this because the thumb drive, which I'd been thinking was bootable, is actually not bootable? Again, this thumb drive contains the files that the Microsoft Store offered to download when I purchased Win 10 Pro from the Microsoft Store last year. I don't remember what the Microsoft Store message offering to save the files to a USB thumb drive said, but I've been thinking that the resulting thumb drive would be bootable and would have recovery tools of some sort on it. Can anyone here say whether this drive should be bootable or not, and whether or not it would have recovery tools allowing me to access System Restore on it?
Thank you.
If you look at the USB flash drive in diskmgmt.msc (Disk Management Console), it should show as Active and Primary Partition if it is bootable, like this:
I believe you have access to another PC, so you should be able to check this for yourself (of course, you could also just fire it up and see if it works).
HTH,
--Ed--
Thank you, Ed. I just popped the thumb drive into my wife's PC and, yes, it does show as bootable in diskmgmt. Given that, do you have any thoughts as to why I have not yet been able to boot from this thumb drive, and why it won't show in the BIOS or Boot Menu?If you look at the USB flash drive in diskmgmt.msc (Disk Management Console), it should show as Active and Primary Partition if it is bootable, like this:
I believe you have access to another PC, so you should be able to check this for yourself (of course, you could also just fire it up and see if it works).
HTH,
--Ed--
Although I can now access the BIOS and Boot Menu and also can boot from a disc in the DVD drive, I am still unable to use the BIOS or Boot Menu to enable a boot from the USB thumb drive. Would following AndreTen's earlier suggestion to disconnect my main SSD drive with Win 10 on it possibly allow the USB thumb drive to be booted, or would the fact that the thumb drive does not show up in the BIOS or Boot Menu when it's plugged in mean that there's simply no way the PC will ever boot to the thumb drive?
Sometimes this can happen when the thumbdrive is USB 3 and the PC ports don't load USB 3 drivers until the OS gets booted. That means potential issues with those ports for booting from. This may be what's biting you. I'd suggest burning a DVD to boot from instead, rather than trying to troubleshoot this further. This could be just another rathole for you to get lost in. Why not skip it, and just take the easy way out this time?
HTH,
--Ed--
Just a thought but have a look in device manager, hidden devices and get rid of any hidden USB drives mice and keyboards that may be showing.
I had this problem intermittently with the mouse vanishing which went away when I removed a hidden no longer plugged in 3g USB dongle that I had used for a couple of days when my main connection was down.
Got a PS2 mouse port and a PS2 mouse? That's how I got into device manager without a working USB mouse.
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