How do I set the UEFI to boot sequence to a USB stick?

cheaterslick said:

I'm pretty new to all this and have never done this before but I have an old Dell Latitude E5570 that I want to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. As the title to this thread says, how do I set the EUFI to boot sequence to a USB stick?
I press F12 and it takes me to UEFI, and BIOS settings with a myriad of options and I don't know how to set one of the USB ports to make it bootable.

On a Dell F12 invokes the one time boot menu. You must have the usb plugged in before you turn on the PC for it to be listed as an option.


But you do NOT want to boot from the usb if you want to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1 and keep your installed apps and files. What you should do for an upgrade is run the Setup.exe you can see on your USB from within Windows. Windows 10 will be able to check that your existing Windows is activated and use that to activate Windows 10 with a digital licence.

Upgrade to Windows 10

Booting from the USB is only for doing a clean install.

Ditto @Bree. My experience is that Upgrading can be done as mentioned from the USB drive but also by Mount of the downloaded .iso file and running setup.exe from there. I've done my computers using both methods and the boot method has not changed, either GPT/UEFI or MBR, whatever was in use. Only caveat, could be either one on drives up to 2TB, larger needs GPT.

cheaterslick said:

Yeah, I don't have any apps installed except Office 2016 so other than that, I'm not worried about preserving anything. I'd like to avoid reinstalling Office though, if possible.

Is running from the Setup.exe the best way to do this?

And can I avoid having to link an email account to the OS doing it this way?

Running the setup.exe file from within Windows was the way to do an Upgrade keeping things. If the computer already has a Microsoft Account it should keep things the same. I've clean installed Win10 a few times while disconnected from the Internet and gotten Local Accounts with Admin Rights on them, last 3 times was then offered Win11 Upgrades and still have only Local Accounts on them. I've gotten things from the Store with my Microsoft Account but it didn't change the Local Account of the computers.

cheaterslick said:

Sorry for being so late.

Not a problem....

And I can activate this offline? Will it automatically be able to read my old license that's already embedded in there?

Do you intend to upgrade your Windows 8.1 to Windows 10? Or do you want to clean install Windows 10?

If you upgrade from 8.1 to 10 you can do that offline, but you'd need to go online to get activation. The upgrade will take your existing W8.1 activation as proof of entitlement and create a digital license for Windows 10 on Microsoft's activation servers, your Windows will not be activated until it has done so. This digital license is linked to the hardware ID of your PC and allows you to do a clean install (if you ever need to) without providing a key.

Upgrade to Windows 10

What OS was this Dell Latitude E5570 originally supplied with by Dell? If it was built for and supplied with Windows 8/8.1 then there will be an OEM W8/8.1 key embedded in its firmware. In a clean install Setup can read this key and use it to activate Windows 10. Again, after the install is complete it needs to contact the Microsoft's activation servers to complete this and create the digital license for your PC. You can check for a key in the firmware using ShowKeyPlus

If ShowKeyPlus says there is no OEM key for W8/8.1, or that it has a Windows 7 OEM marker in the firmware, then a clean install won't be able to activate. You either need to upgrade from 8 to 10 first to get a digital license for the PC then clean install, or use this tutorial to capture the activation state of your W8.1 and use that to activate Windows.

Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First

But either way, you'd have to go online at some point in order to get activation.