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Lost access to BIOS & Boot Options at startup

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My HP Envy17t-2100 3D CTO laptop normally displayed a message "Esc for startup options" shown at bottom-left of a blank screen just before Windows starts booting up.

I recently upgraded to Win10 Pro x64 (from Win7 Pro x64), then: a) uninstalled Acronis Disk Director 11, b) installed Acronis True Image 2015, c) upgraded to Acronis 2016.  At some point of these 4 actions I lost the "Esc" message display before windows starting, and can no longer access BIOS or BIOS Boot Options.

Despite the "Esc" message not displaying, I tried to use standard Esc, F9, F10, F2 keys to choose the boot device / enter the BIOS setup (using both my laptop's keyboard and later an external USB keyboard) to boot from an external USB drive, but I was unable to - the laptop does not react to any keystroke(s), and if I press and hold the F or Esc key, it starts beeping and hangs up.  However, when I used Acronis True Image today to clone my System hard drive for backup purposes, I noticed that during the Acronis-forced reboot (to load Acronis bootstrap for cloning operation) the Esc message DID APPEAR on bottom-left of the screen.  The same result (sudden one-time appearance of the "Esc" message enabling to initiate the Boot Options menu) happened after I re-installed the latest BIOS downloaded from HP website.

Following these one-time re-activations of access to BIOS / Boot Options, the laptop (or Win10) boots without displaying the "Esc" message screen, and again prevents me from using the keyboard to access BIOS.

I don't have the available HP UEFI Bios extensions installed (previously issued as a Win7 update by HP) , as I don't know what it will do to my laptop's HD, I don't know what the benefits would be, and I never needed this feature. Every single driver in Win10 have been updated to latest versions manually using "search automatically for updated driver software".  The laptop works perfectly fine in all aspects, except the boot options and Bios access problem described above, and does not hang-up or freeze randomly.  All software packages installed on it work perfectly.

Can my problem be associated with Acronis software in one of the following ways: a) some incompatibility of True Image 2015 (briefly installed before upgrading to 2016) with Win10, b) some remaining drivers or boot record from the Disk Director (installed using Win7 and uninstalled using Win10), c) some other interference between Acronis software and Win10?

Or is this a Win10 issue of incompatibility with 3-year old HP laptop?

Anyone with non-destructive ideas to try?

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More than likely your issue is due to the Win 10 upgrade, see link below:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Boot-and-Lockup/Envy-17t-not-resp…

Have you tried using the Advanced Startup option from within the Windows 10 settings to restart the system into the BIOS settings panels?

Open All Settings, then Update & Security, then the Recovery link where you will see Advanced Startup - you will need to click on Restart now and then select the option as the PC restarts.  I have had to do this on systems which no longer provide direct access to BIOS at boot time without using a pin-hole button to do so.

See http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/access-bios-windows-10

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klimunt99,

I did a search on Win 10 Hide BIOS, and got several links to look at.  The one below is from Microsoft:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider…

One of the responses states:

"This is so weird ... If you do a reboot all BIOS bootup options are available. If you do a Shutdown and then turn the computer on then all of the BIOS bootup options are unavailable."

So, perhaps rebooting will work for you.

Also, you could activate the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager, which is covered on page 124 of the user manual.  Once activated, during the boot sequence, it brings up a message "Press F11 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager"

Let us know what you find out.

Regards,

FtrPilot

 

This should be completely bios, system related and not a bibprodcut of the OS because the bios is hardware level and completely independent of the OS.  

I have an older HP netbook and it will skip past the boot override a lot as well, despite quickly pressing F1 and/or esc like I normally do.  Once it starts doing this, it rarely recovers on it's own.    I think this might be an HP bios issue.  Mine is a laptop so when it does this, I'll pull the battery and remove AC power, hit power a few times to drain remaining power in the capicitors and then plug the battery and AC power in and boot up and then F1/Esc funtionality seems to work again . I have no idea what causes this since I'm using the built in keyboad on the laptop, but it somehow seems related to the HP bios itself.  As yours is also a laptop, I'd give it a shot and see if it helps at all. 

I agree with Bobbo, of the responses offered beyond the fact that this is a bios hardware issue is that of disabling Windows 10 Fast Startup feature.  That is not guaranteed to work either.  Another thing you might try is when booting the machine immediately after you press the power button start rapidly hitting the ESC key.  You just might get lucky, catch it just right, and get the setup options menu to display.

That question on HO forum was posted by me.

Thank you - that's useful to know.  I mean the fact that this is, as I understand, basically a result of Microsoft speeding up the boot to Windows as much as they could.

However, the link you provided shows UEFI boot settings access through Win10's Advanced Startup.  As I mentioned in my post, I have no UEFI firmware/support installed.

Should I try anyway, you think?

It is worth giving it a try and see what you are offered for your specific laptop setup.

Read FtrPilot's link - it appears to be a purely Win10 issue, i.e.: incomplete shutdown.

I'll try and report the outcome.

I have the same issue that klimunt99 has.  Since upgrading to Windows 10, I often lose the option to hit F2 for BIOS.

DONE & SOLVED!!!

Thanks to FtrPilot (acronis forums) & Buck614 (MS Insider forums)!  I'll re-quote the SOLUTION to BIOS "hidden" by Win10 by Buck614, dating back to Oct. 2014:

""I just found it. Thanks. Here it is in case anyone needs it:

So basically the 'Fast Startup' option was turned on.

Here is how you turn it off:

Go to 'Control Panel -> 'Power Options' -> from the left hand column select 'What the Power Buttons Do' -> at the top of the page select 'Change Settings that are currently unavailable' -> scroll all of the way to the bottom and uncheck 'Turn on Fast Startup (Recommended)'. Then click 'Save Changes'.""

Glad you found a workaround.  It is just a workaround however, HP needs to fix it by updating your bios file to work with Win 10.  Other manufacturers as well I presume!