Is entering a BIOS really that complicated?

[okkee]

Saw an article on the recent Intel/Partners mess and they were like "entering a bios is tricky/complicated" for most. But who's building/buying a PC, especially an i9/i7 without being able to follow instructions in a video or article?? Not the first time I've seen the point and it just seems silly. 

[Blasty Blosty]

It's literally 1 button lol

[Levent]

Its the fucking windows that fucks it up. "Fast startup" option in Windows comes pre-enabled and when you click shutdown button in windows your computer is actually not shutting down, when your computer wakes up it straight up loads OS and skips whole enter bios input.

 

I keep that shit disabled on every system I setup since the day they introduced in 2012.

[Needfuldoer]

2 minutes ago, Blasty Blosty said:

It's literally 1 button lol

Unless you don't know which button, so you have to quickly mash DEL, F1, F2, and F12 in hopes that one of them is correct.

[AndreiArgeanu]

I mean it technically is if you're not familiar already and haven't read the manual. The bios screen is usually up for a second or less giving you pretty much no time to read, and in some devices, there isn't even any indication on what button to press on startup (usually laptops I think). So to an inexperienced person it isn't immediately obvious what they need to do.

[Blasty Blosty]

1 minute ago, Needfuldoer said:

Unless you don't know which button, so you have to quickly mash DEL, F1, F2, and F12 in hopes that one of them is correct.

True, technically 4 buttons then

[Levent]

1 minute ago, Blasty Blosty said:

True, technically 4 buttons then

Unless you have to introduce FN key to the combination lol. Plus I believe its F10 in Lenovos (AND sometimes Enter key).

[Blasty Blosty]

10 minutes ago, Levent said:

Unless you have to introduce FN key to the combination lol. Plus I believe its F10 in Lenovos (AND sometimes Enter key).

That hurts my brain

[Poinkachu]

20 minutes ago, Levent said:

Unless you have to introduce FN key to the combination lol. Plus I believe its F10 in Lenovos (AND sometimes Enter key).

F2 for my Legion 5
At the very least up to my laptop's Legion 5.

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

56 minutes ago, Levent said:

Unless you have to introduce FN key to the combination lol. Plus I believe its F10 in Lenovos (AND sometimes Enter key).

Not only Lenovo.

At least Lenovo enables Fn-lock meaning it is still just one key (F10 or F12).

[porina]

It's fun when your monitor wakes up after the time you needed to press the button. So I often spam it earlier. Might depend on when RGB keyboards get initialised (or USB) in boot process, but on mine, when it lights up, press the button!

 

Or run shutdown /r /fw /t 0 in Windows to reboot to bios.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Blasty Blosty said:

It's literally 1 button lol

yea... but which one???

 

[Blasty Blosty]

8 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yea... but which one???

 

Well 1 after you try every one

[Stahlmann]

You can also hold shift while clicking on the restart button, then the PC reboots into troubleshooting mode where you can click "advanced startup" and "enter UEFI/BIOS/firmware". After you select it, the PC reboots again and goes directly into the BIOS. You can get around the timed button mashing this way.

[loony979]

Mobo's these days are starting to go the this will do method & yeah the windows fast boot thingymebob. Is a little of putting. I miss the old days when that guy from Asus would go over to say Linus / Jayztocents so forth & walk throw all the sick new stuff they had. They cared back then nowa days it's like they got it it'll work & pay us. Hate to see where it's at in 10 years time from now, for Mobo's & Windows god help us.

[Poinkachu]

36 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

You can get around the timed button mashing this way.

But ... but.... it's a fun game !!

 

34 minutes ago, loony979 said:

for Mobo's & Windows god help us.

God : Sorry bud.... I have more important things to care about

[Doobeedoo]

Laptops can be annoying, but on desktop power on spam Delete gg.

[Poinkachu]

Come to think of it...

Unplugging all boot drive will send you to BIOS no ?

[BobVonBob]

Ironically, entering a given BIOS screen becomes more difficult the more you know about them.

 

As far as I can recall I've seen BIOS keys on F1, F2, F9, F10, F11, F12, and Delete. Worse still manufacturers will switch the key between models, or even generations of the same model. And just to twist the knife a little more many have secondary functions like one-time boot menus and diagnostics on the other keys, so mashing them all at once just sends you somewhere random.

 

And the cherry on top, the internet is dead and searching for the answer will just lead you to page after page of SEO-optimized drivel from an LLM with 50/50 odds on hallucinating the wrong key.

[freeagent]

It usually tells you what button to push on startup lol

[Needfuldoer]

4 hours ago, Blasty Blosty said:

That hurts my brain

That's one reason I recommend Dell for prebuilts. Across the board, you invoke their one-time boot menu with F12. 

 

Doesn't matter if it's a desktop or laptop that crosses the workbench. It's always F12.

[Beerzerker]

4 hours ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

I mean it technically is if you're not familiar already and haven't read the manual. The bios screen is usually up for a second or less giving you pretty much no time to read, and in some devices, there isn't even any indication on what button to press on startup (usually laptops I think). So to an inexperienced person it isn't immediately obvious what they need to do.

You're referring to the system POST screen, not a BIOS screen here.

Any screens in the BIOS will not show during bootup, you must be in the BIOS to see them.
There are a few ways to get access to the BIOS if the machine is just blowing through it's POST screen and I too have had this happen before - Annoying but it happens.

With some posts made above this one, those are handy ways to get in or like I do alot of the time, you could trick the system into thinking there is a problem and forcing a boot error, causing a BIOS access "Stop" in it's POST screen.
This trick doesn't work with all boards but for some it's handy to use.

All you do is start the system by pressing the system start button and hold it until it cuts off, then press it again repeating this cycle of start/stop while holding the system start button about three or four times through this on/off power cycle.
After that you can then start it normally and (If it's going to work) the system will stop itself at the POST screen and prompt you to press F1 to enter and reconfigure your BIOS settings.

From there you can do whatever if you need to but again, it doesn't work with all systems (Boards), you'll have to try it and see if it works or not for your own system.

[Erioch]

2 hours ago, freeagent said:

It usually tells you what button to push on startup lol

"Usually"

2 hours ago, Poinkachu said:

Unplugging all boot drive will send you to BIOS no ?

All of the drives in my PC are m.2 drives.  Some requiring removing the GPU and covers from the mobo. I'd rather spam a random key.

[Kid.Lazer]

1 hour ago, Poinkachu said:

Come to think of it...

Unplugging all boot drive will send you to BIOS no ?

That was easy to do back in the SATA days. With m.2, it's not as simple unfortunately.

[Poinkachu]

1 hour ago, Erioch said:

"Usually"

All of the drives in my PC are m.2 drives.  Some requiring removing the GPU and covers from the mobo. I'd rather spam a random key.

 

1 hour ago, Kid.Lazer said:

That was easy to do back in the SATA days. With m.2, it's not as simple unfortunately.

 

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