Getting into BIOS settings

On my desktop it is 'Del' for BIOS settings and F12 for boot menu, and on my aged laptop it is F2 for BIOS settings and F12 for boot menu

"You can also manually choose the Boot Setting by pressing the power button to power on the computer, then quickly pressing the F12 key."

"While powering on your computer, press the F12 key when the initial TOSHIBA screen displays. The boot menu appears."

However, it talks of F2 here.

What they mean by that, is press it in less than one second. Some computers, that window of opportunity is very very tight. Ninja material.

Paul

Computer boot too quickly for their own good nowadays, I power on then press the appropriate key and hold it down until the BIOS screen appears.

All you can really doo is keep stabbing the F key it asks you to and eventually it will see it but start this before power on. What I cannot understand is why they cannot wait till windows has booted, give you a nice screen to adjust the parameters with current defaults loaded, then when happy just after the re closing of windows, a small program writes the values to the cmos and reboots the windows with the new settings. I mean back in the days of 8 bit machines like the Spectrum and BBC machines, we could do this sort of thing, although there was no bios, it rewrote the definition file that the dos used. Even CP/M machines did this. Back in the days of MS Dos there were small routines for this as well, and they did have bios settings.

Brian

'However'? It's pretty clear from the above, hitting F12 gets you to the boot menu and hitting F2 gets you to the BIOS setup.

I simply bang away at the required key at the same time as I turn the power on. Hitting it too many times and at the wrong time doesn't seem to matter.

My ThinkPad simply says "Hit Return to interrupt normal boot sequence" and waits several seconds to see if you do. Hitting return is much easier than a (usually rarely used) Function key which you have to hunt for.

Assuming Win10 or Win11, then from within Windows ...

settings, system, advanced startup, reboot now

it'll reboot into a "blue screen" menu environment, follow

troubleshoot, advanced options, UEFI firmware settings

I often find you need to restart, then periodically tap the required key every second or so as it powers up to try and hit the right "window" of time.

However, on some machines there is an easier way. When in windows open a command prompt with admin rights, and enter:

shutdown /r /fw /f /t 0

Where:

/r means restart

/fw means go to firmware interface

/f means force apps to close with no warnings

/t n indicates the time to wait in seconds before shutdown

(not all PCs will respond to the /fw option alas)

On my desktop (ASUS Board) it is F8 for the boot menu, Shift for grub or DEL for the BIOS.

One info source (toshiba site), does not even mention F2 in the user manual. They only bothered to mention F12. Rather than documenting both keys. One key enters BIOS, one key is for popup boot selection.

Using a second page, I managed to find the F2 BIOS key mentioned.

And this is not the first time I've run into this issue of half-assed info for the BIOS section.

Usually, a manufacturer is consistent across their product lines, so if one lappy uses F2/F12, they all should. Each manufacturer may be different (Asus is <del>/F8), but all the Asus devices will use the same keys for that. Similarly, when there is a serial port header (2x5), the wiring on those should be the same across all circuit boards. There are two standards for wiring those, and a manufacturer picks one and sticks to it. Asus does not use the same 2x5 pattern as Intel. Some other things we use, are more standardized (common standard everywhere).

When you're at BIOS level, and the first BIOS text screen appears (you've turned off the full-screen LOGO function), the "Pause/Break" key can be used to make the BIOS text stand still. This is how you Pause the BIOS screen long enough, to read the "F2/F12" line at the bottom of the screen. So if you're on a new platform, the manual sucks, you may be able to use the "Pause/Break" to get the screen to stand still so you can read the details at the bottom.

When you press the "Pause/Break" a second time, the BIOS then continues onward with the process.

Paul