How Do I Boot From a DVD - Dell AIO

I have my parents' 6 month old Dell All-In-One monstrosity. Since these is practically nothing on the chassis beyond the service tag number I had to use that to determine that it's a Dell Inspiron 24 5488 with a 64 bit Windows 10 OS. I have no idea if it's Home or Pro.I have a DVD with both Home and Pro, but I don't know how to set the BIOS to boot from it (or which OS to choose).When I start it I get a blue screen that gives me 'Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart'. There's a percent counter that goes from 0 to 100, at which point it restarts. And does the same thing.If I hit F12 I get a screen headed 'Boot mode is set to: UEFI Secure boot: ON'. It gives me a Diagnostic option. It checks the Partition Table, the Boot Files and Windows Health. It passes all 3 with 'No Issues Detected. You can safely restart your system. Another reboot gives me the percent screen from the previous paragraph.If I hit F12 again I have no idea what to do to get it to boot from my DVD. I have UEFI Options of Windows Boot Manager,Onboard NIC (IPv4),Onboard NIC (IPv6)Other Options of BIOS Setup and DiagnosticsI've explained what Diagnostics does (does not) do. If I go to Bios Setup and tab over to Boot I get Boot Option Priorities #1, 2 and 3.Each Boot Option gives me 4 choices - Onboard Nic (IPV4), Onboard Nic (IPV6), Windows Boot Manager or Disabled.What happened to the good old days when you could select HDD, CDROM or USB Device? I have no idea what to do to get this to boot from a disc.

Hello!

Modern computers and tablets have a new alternative to the good-old BIOS called UEFI Firmware. The BIOS in these computers (if you can configure them to use it instead) is called CMS or Legacy mode. In a Dell computer you can override the boot order and choose a boot device with F12. If it is configured to boot in UEFI mode (like in your case) you can see only UEFI enabled devices. To see the DVD-ROM or USB as a selection it must contain appropriate data to boot in UEFI rather than old-school BIOS (Legacy mode). In some systems at the bottom of the device list is an option to change the boot mode from UEFI to Legacy and vice versa. If you can see this option, highlight it, press ENTER and from the next list choose to disable Secure boot and enable Legacy BIOS mode. If there is no such option, you can either create an UEFI USB or DVD-ROM and boot from there or enter in UEFI Firmware (aka BIOS in old terms) and change it manually from there, in order to use a "traditional" Windows DVD-ROM or USB Flash drive. To enter BIOS in Dell systems press either F2 or ESC (depending on model). To create an UEFI DVD-ROM, you can download the Windows 10 ISO using the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...load/windows10 and then burn it on a DVD-ROM using a tool such as Imgburn or Microsoft's own DVD/USB download tool. The Windows 10 DVD-ROM can be booted either in UEFI or Legacy mode. On the other hand, if you prefer to create a bootable USB Flash drive, you can either use Microsoft's tool, but remember to choose UEFI mode, or use Rufus. If you use Rufus, make sure you set the Partition scheme and target system type (second list) to GPT partition scheme for UEFI, to make it UEFI bootable. Any other option will boot in Legacy mode. So, once you prepare your DVD-ROM or USB Flash drive, boot the computer, press F12 and select the appropriate device to start the Windows Setup. The DVD-ROM will not appear at first, you have to insert the disc and with the disc inside the drive restart and press F12 again to see the DVD-ROM selection. To see the USB selection you must connect the device and then boot the computer. In most cases the Windows key will be stored in the UEFI Firmware (BIOS), so Windows Setup will not ask you for one, but automatically detect it and select either Home or Pro version. The same is true if the embedded key is Windows 8.1 core or Windows 8.1 Pro, or Windows 7 key. If this doesn't happen (embedded key is Windows 8.0 core or 8.0 Pro or other reason), install any version and then use the ShowKeyPlus utility to see which key is embedded and what Windows version it is. If you have installed the wrong version, write down the key, then format and install the correct version. If you enter the key when prompted the correct version will be chosen automatically. For drivers you can either visit Dell's site and enter the Service Tag, or use an automatic driver utility such as Snappy Driver Installer. The full version is the whole database 14GB (useful for offline driver installation) and the Lite version allows you to search for your computer's drivers only (1-2GB) and install them online, provided the LAN card works and you have internet access. So go for the Lite version.

I hope that helps. :)

It seems that the damage to the Windows installation is high and cannot be fixed. If you have any files you need to backup, you can use a live DVD-ROM to boot and copy them to a USB Flash drive or USB hard disk, then format and do a clean installation as explained in my previous reply. There are many Linux versions that you can use as a live DVD-ROM but it is far easier to use a live Windows DVD-ROM such as Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable PE Rescue Disk from here: Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums Boot with this DVD-ROM (it supports both UEFI and Legacy modes) and be patient, it will take some time to boot because it creates a virtual drive (RAM drive) on RAM, copies Windows there and then boots from it. Once there you can open a Windows Explorer and copy your data. User data are on the Windows partition (in some systems this is named OS) in folder Users and subfolder the user's name. It is a good idea to download and install Hard Disk Sentinel to see the hard disk's health. If it is not perfect 100%, you might consider replacing it. If it is under 90% I strongly recommend to replace it. As soon as you have done your backup, and assuming the disk has health 100%, restart the computer and do a clean Windows installation (delete all partitions and click next at the disk selection screen).

I would create a USB flash drive for a clean install of Windows 10 using the media creation tool you can download from Microsoft:
Download Windows 10

You will need a 6 or 8 GB flash drive (or larger). I recommend just a simple, generic USB 2.0 or 3.0 flash drive from a brand name company such as SanDisk, Lexar, or Verbatim. You can usually get them on sale from an office supply store or Wal Mart for less than $10.

Then with the USB flash drive plugged into a USB port and no DVD in the drive, enter either the boot menu (F12) or UEFI setup (F2) and the flash drive should appear in the boot menus and/or boot priorities. At this point forget about all the repair this PC options. Just go into normal Windows install, select the custom install options, delete all the existing partitions on the hard drive, and do a clean install by highlighting the remaining large unallocated space on the drive after deleting the partitions and click next. When the computer reboots, if it reboots back into Windows setup from the USB flash drive, just remove it and reboot again.

I agree with NavyLCDR, only if you don't mind about your files. If you need to take a backup first, read my previous reply.