Yeah, via bios by hitting f key during the 0.2 second window of opportunity. Could it be a hardware issue? Seems unlikely though as it performs really great beyond this issue and having done a sfc /scannow it gave me the all clear (maybe that wouldn't show me a problem, my limited knowledge keeps cropping up!).
So, worst case scenario, i get into the bios (by some form of miracle) and it shows me that I'm set to hdd (ssd) as primary source, does that mean that there is a hardware fault and would it therefore be covered by warranty? Or, can i simply reinstall windows 7 and resolve this whole issue.