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#21
OK, so I just noticed something. When I shutdown my laptop, using the standard power -> shutdown option, because I have Windows fast startup enabled, my laptop doesn't really shut down 100%. When I restart my laptop, I actually don't get the ESC key option which lets me then go into bios setup or boot device selection. Now, the easy way around that is to do a restart - either from the lock screen or desktop - that does a full cold reboot and lets me hit ESC to enter my bios/boot menu again.
So, I correct my earlier statement - on a cold reboot, it is impossible for Windows to interfere with the bios delay allowing the user to press the key to enter bios setup or the boot menu. But the hybrid shutdown may not be a complete shutdown with a subsequent cold start from the bios.
Most PCs have a popup ley that gives you boot choices, check your computer manual it should say if you have this. But sometimes you have to set up a CD or DVD boot from advanced startup.
If you can get to the BIOS, you might have to set up a Profile to boot from CD, but usually if you set that up it won't boot to HDD if there is no CD, it will just give you a boot sector not found message. Some manufacturers are skimping with the Bios, they are replacing the BIOS with a UEFI boot partition, that you can usually access with an F key. HP does this for some of their laptops.
You might have to set up a legacy boot option for it to act like it used to, Windows 8.1 and 10 get their tendrils in there and take it over. Honestly, I've had to set up several new machines for legacy boot.
Thanks all for the advice. I am not a novice on computers and have been doing desktop support for 10 years. I have tried all the obvious BIOS settings etc. Lenovo has a UEFI bios update that I will not install so there are no UEFI options in BIOS. I have seen on google that switching to legacy etc but my BIOS has none of those options.
I can press F12 and get a boot device selection menu. I have a known bootable CD in the drive. When I select the CD as boot device, the system boots to the hard drive starting Win10. On Windows 7 everything works fine with none of these issues.
I had trouble re-imaging my machine back to Win 7 because of this boot problem. The only way I could fix it was to take the hard drive out and hook it to another system and delete the Windows 10 partitions. Then I could boot to cd.
Looks like Win 10 implements UEFI by default. I tried Win 10 setting holding shift and doing restart. Online it shows a device select option but I do not have that option. I guess there is no fix rather than stay with Win 7 as I need my machine to do what I want not what Microsoft wants.
I have fastboot disabled and no option in BIOS for secure boot.
I had that problem - Let the laptop go into Windows 10 and then hold down and don't let go of the shift key and click on shut down.
You will have full access to bios and booting from the CD/Dvd just like always.