Can't boot to Advanced Startup on Windows 10 -- holding down shift key doesn't do it

me100400

I am unable to boot to Windows 10 Advanced Startup by holding down the shift key while starting up. That is supposed to be how to do it. I also have tried holding down F8 key, and then tried shift + F8, nothing works. I have never been able to do this.

I have a Gateway laptop, model NE56R, made Dec. 22, 2012. Is there perhaps some special way to do it on a Gatway laptop?

If I am unable to boot, it does not necessarily automatically go to Advanced Startup.

I am running the latest May update of Windows 10. What am I to do?

billsey

The Windows method of holding the shift key does work, but you start holding the key when you tell Windows to restart, not after it starts the boot process. F8 combos won't do anything, those are leftover from XP and not supported in 10. You can also do it from within Windows this way:

1. At the Windows desktop, open the Start Menu and click on Settings (The gear icon)
2. Select Update and Security.
3. Select Recovery from the left hand side menu.
4. Under Advanced Startup click on the Restart Now button on the right hand side of the screen.
5. The Computer will restart and boot to an Options Menu.
6. Click on Troubleshoot.

me100400

Thank you! I suppose I should have mentioned, I know to do that, hold it down right away when starting up, well before it grabs into the OS. That's what I've been doing -- but it does not work.

I also know ho to get toit via Settings. That does work. But I need to be able to get to it when it won't boot, the Settings approach is useless then. I need to get to it during startup, and I can't.

billsey

You don't hold it down while starting, you hold it down while shutting down or restarting.

me100400

You say're saying it doens;t work from a cold start,only from a restart. Well, I had tested that previously, and it doesn't do it. I just tested again now, and it didn't do it, it just started to desktop as usual.

Sorry for delayed response, my Internet went down at dawn Saturday, and I just got it back. My original notice e-mail about this message had a different message, I guess you changed it? It was about continually tappng the Shift button, not holding it down steady. I tried that now too, but that did not work.

billsey

No, the continuous tapping is for the F2 to get into the BIOS, a long press won't work for that.

me100400

Well, I'm not trying to get into bios. But you are mistaken, you simply hold down the F2 as its booting, and it goes to bios. I have to do that any time I want to boot from an external disk, in order to change it to Legacy boot.

aphanic

Which function of the Advanced Setup are you interested in? Maybe I could provide you with an alternate way to get there.

For example, if it is Safe Mode you could do it from an administrative PowerShell or CMD prompt:



Another option would be to switch away from the Windows 8+ boot process to the older 7 so F8 during boot would work and show you the options:

me100400

I don’t have a specific need at the moment. But I want to be able to get to Advanced Startup when I can’t boot the computer, so I can use its various repair or recovery or Command Prompt as might be needed. I need to be able to boot to it from a cold start or at least from a forced restart (holding down power key until computer shuts down). And, I’m using Win 10, not Win 8 (but you were merely talking of boot process — but again, I would need to first get to Advanced Startup in order to run those commands).

I can’t otherwise access Command Prompt or Power Shell if I can’t boot.

aphanic

I know you're on 10, but on 8 or 8.1 was when they shifted away from the legacy boot menu prefetching things first. For dual booting and using Windows as the boot manager it's actually better to have the policy be that of 7 because you're presented with the OS selector first (and F8, etc. works as expected) instead of first loading most of Windows 10 and then showing you the boot menu.

You could just leave the boot menu policy to be the legacy one and be done then, if you ever needed to access recovery settings it'd just be like old times, pressing F8 when powering on the PC and the Windows loader begins.

As for the bigger question here, why on earth aren't you able to access those settings? No idea man, it's the first time I've seen anything like it. I mean, it's clear that something in there is messing up with that ability (assuming you have admin rights and all), but I can't pinpoint what. A clean installation of Windows 10, while radical, may be the only solution I could suggest.

me100400

OK, thanks. I'd still like to fiugre out how to get Shift + Restart to boot it to Advanced Recovery. Re changing things to instead boot to recovery from F8, I have read that will slow my startup time always, not very desirable when as far as I'm concerened it takes too long to start up already.

Commodore_1995#

You can enable the f8 command: https://www.opentechguides.com/how-to/article/windows-10/103/enable-f8-safe-mode.html

me100400

Here's an idea I had. Since there is a command line to set things to Legacy and then instead use F8 to boot to Advanced Startup, is there perhaps a command to maybe turn off the ability to hold down the shift key to boot to Advanced Startup? If so, is there then a counter-command to turn it back on? Maybe that is what will get it done, a command line to turn the function on. And no, it is not now set to boot to Advanced Startup by holding down the F8 key while booting.

aphanic

I'm afraid I'm unaware of such a thing @me100400, I too wonder why you can't get into that menu but since I can't replicate it on my side I can't run any kind of tests.

If I keep Shift pressed right before I click on Restart it shows me the screen. Another explanation that just crossed my mind is that you have some sort of keylogger or "keystroke protection" software that is interfering with what you press.

me100400

I have been unclear about whether that will work from a cold start, if it MUST be a restart. Still, I have tested it both ways, no diffenerce on my machine, doesn't work either way. I have tested as you just described too.

I don't know of any keylogger or "keystroke protection," whatever that is, on this machine.

Just for details, yes, I'm now running the latest verison of Win 10, and this key combination has not worked in the past either. This machine shipped with Win 8. I do recall trying it even when I was at Win 8.1, and it did not work for me then either.

aphanic

me100400 said:

I don't know of any keylogger or "keystroke protection," whatever that is, on this machine. 

Yeah, keyloggers are easy to understand, they register whatever you type. For the other kind I used quotes because I wouldn't really know how to describe them. They act as an intermediary as well at a low level to try to difficult the job of keyloggers, it you press 'a' for example they would make it look like you pressed something else to a keylogger, but on screen everything would work normally.

I have no idea how they do it or how they work, but it was another option that you had one of them installed and they were interfering. However...

me100400 said:

This machine shipped with Win 8. I do recall trying it even when I was at Win 8.1, and it did not work for me then either. 

That part makes me think of a hardware issue? I mean, maybe the shift keycode is messed up in the firmware of the machine or something?

I wish I could replicate the situation but over here everything works as it should, and I don't have the exact same model you do either. It would be interesting to see if it happened in virtual as well, but I don't know if that laptop would be able to run a virtual environment without bringing it to a crawl. And creating and sending an image to me is another no-go because it'd have personal data, it's not in a clean state in which just Windows is installed, if not I'd be happy to restore the image in a virtual machine over here and see if the same thing happens (which would mean there's something software related affecting it) or if the menu shows up as expected (which would point to a hardware problem).

me100400

WEll, here's another thght I jsut ahd. MIght something in Services need tobe turned on? AT Control Panels/Adminstrative Tools/Services. I was just looking throhg, see a few things disabled, but I know what most are, and they are OK. But there are a coule I don't know, such as:

Dritek WMI Service

Wondershare Application Framework Services

And another having sometign to do with Intel:

Intel Dynamic Application Loader.

I do have an Intel Pentium CPU in this machine (I checked, I thought I had AMD).

Why can't I find anyting on the computer to turn keyboard shortcuts on or off? I can't find anything related to that. I was even looking under Settings and found Typing, which was for keyboard, but nothing in it about keybaord shortcuts.

As for firmware, I can only point out that it should be automatically updated. I don't know if somewhere between 8.1 and 10 it would need an update, or since 10 came out.

aphanic

I just came up with something else we could try, but it would require you to have an external hard drive that you could fully erase for the time being.

It's called Windows to Go and it was meant for the enterprise to have mobile workstations ready to use in USB sticks. Was, because it has been deprecated for a while and unsupported from 2004 on.

It would need to be a hard drive I'm afraid, USB sticks have VERY low random read/write performance and it would be terribly slow, the USB sticks certified for Windows to Go were special ones.

Anyway, we could create one of those, and boot off it. Think of it as having Windows installed in that external hard drive, it would be a clean installation of Windows and in Windows to Go internal disks are offlined by default (meaning they're not accessible unless you do some steps) so there's no risk for your data at all.

I could detail the steps to get that done as long as you can get your hands on such a thing, and we won't be using anything esoteric or enterprise like, a regular Windows installation image suffices because we'd use windows Home or Pro, it's just to test anyway if it has something to do with the hardware.

In such a clean environment if it were not to work either, it would surely have something to with the hardware.

me100400

Sounds like a good test, to narrow things down. Unfortunately, I don't have an external disk we can use. I actually do have an external hard drive, but can't use it, it is all I have to keep my two backups of the internal drive, each backup at 125 GB. There's only something like 50 GB left on it, maybe slightly less, so even creating a partition to do this, it wouldn't be enough space.

BTW, as for external connection, I have only an external mouse plugged in. OK, I'll unplug that and test. But that's not going to be the issue.

aphanic

I'll get back at you if I think of something else, I may end up writing a keylogger myself to see if when you press Shift it actually registers as Shift and not some other key.

billsey

Fall back should be to turn it on, then turn it off with the power button before the Windows load completes. Do that three times in a row and it should give you the diagnostics menu.