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cereberus said:

Oh man - that's the bloody point - F2 or similar does not bloody work on all bloody pcs. Have you not actually read what I posted! Bye Bye.

This is actually the first time I heard of an F key not working on PC. It's probably a keyboard problem and not a PC. I am sure I wouldn't know until I had one. Bye bye.

meebers said:

I install on separate SSD's, 1 is insider and the other is AU. A dual removable tray makes this so easy. Slide one out just enough to disconnect the pins in the back and and slide the other in to make connections. I only have one in at a time. Boot up must check which one is populated and boots accordingly. Dual tray also makes it easy when I do an image etc on a backup drive. I do have HDD's in use, but prefer an image(s) to be out of the machine and stored away. I find this easy for me. YMMV:)

I have that on my old PC.

badrobot said:

This is actually the first time I heard of an F key not working on PC. It's probably a keyboard problem and not a PC. I am sure I wouldn't know until I had one. Bye bye.

Some have different keys or keystrokes, my last one used Del. key while this one can use Del. and after that F1 while F2 brings it right away in first setup screen, Seen some that also use Esc. key. On my last MB F12 brought a fast boot device switch while on this one is F8. That's why it's important to read manual.

CountMike said:

Some have different keys or keystrokes, my last one used Del. key while this one can use Del. and after that F1 while F2 brings it right away in first setup screen, Seen some that also use Esc. key. On my last MB F12 brought a fast boot device switch while on this one is F8. That's why it's important to read manual.

Or google up. :)
And yeah, my Acer HTPC uses Del key to get to BIOS.

fdegrove said:

Hi,



Then many pc's must have badly coded UEFI bios . Which is a shame. I don't have that issue at all and understand your frustration.
No need to take it out on other members though.....

If anything, UEFI makes dual booting easy and versatile. True dual booting can be flaky, at best.


Cheers,

I am a bit surprised people do not seem to understand that the traditional means of getting to bios is different with UEFI and I have seen lots of newer devices where traditional methods do not work. Even if they do work, they often only work if fastboot is disabled, especially if pc has ssd, as pc can boot too quickly before user can actually press a function key.

In some cases (not my devices), I have had to resort to removing internal bios battery to force a jump to bios to be able to change boot order so I can boot from a flash drive.

This is easy with a pc, but with a laptop, can be a major challenge.

First thing I do on any UEFI pc is access bios and change boot order to boot from a usb flash drive first, then I know if I have issues getting to bios, I can always get there via a usb installation drive which is guaranteed to work on any device.


It is easy to say it is a poor or faulty bios that does not allow access via function keys, but for a lot of devices, that is by design!

Many articles on web that discuss difficulties in accessing bios in UEFI even if pc has function key access e.g.

Can't Access BIOS Setup with F2 Key

cereberus said:

I am a bit surprised people do not seem to understand that the traditional means of getting to bios is different with UEFI and I have seen lots of newer devices where traditional methods do not work. Even if they do work, they often only work if fastboot is disabled, especially if pc has ssd, as pc can boot too quickly before user can actually press a function key.

In some cases (not my devices), I have had to resort to removing internal bios battery to force a jump to bios to be able to change boot order so I can boot from a flash drive.

This is easy with a pc, but with a laptop, can be a major challenge.

First thing I do on any UEFI pc is access bios and change boot order to boot from a usb flash drive first, then I know if I have issues getting to bios, I can always get there via a usb installation drive which is guaranteed to work on any device.


It is easy to say it is a poor or faulty bios that does not allow access via function keys, but for a lot of devices, that is by design!

Many articles on web that discuss difficulties in accessing bios in UEFI even if pc has function key access e.g.

Can't Access BIOS Setup with F2 Key

Everyone knows about the fast boot. And that's your answer. Disable it to have full control of your PC. Just like any machine, it's like the auto/manual override switch.

Just to add a little before we get the "Back to Topic" reminder.....

On this machine, and I'm pretty sure on my old Dell 3847, holding down the shift key while doing either a Restart or cold Power On, gets me right to this. Can go anywhere, including BIOS/UEFI. Assumes, of course, a working system. With a Recovery partition in place. Just a little something that may work for others.