Anyone knowledgeable about computer hard drives, i need some help

[Tom M King]

I haven't had to do anything to a computer after sticking the parts together for probably over a decade now, so I've forgotten how to do a lot of this stuff. How do you get into the BIOS, in a Windows 10 computer, before the OS boots? You used to be able to do it as the system booted, but I haven't seen a prompt in a Long time. Google wasn't much help to my curiosity.

[Mark Hennebury]

Hi Derek, I have tried that; both ways enabled and disabled, and tried booting rom a usb stick with a microsoft "fix" and tried two files downloaded from Dell. it would not boot. changed the boot order and disabled the secure boot, tried to "reset to last good" settings and restore factory settings etc. Tried the multiple on/off sequence to get to recover mode, nothing worked.
On the Canadian website a guy said that windows for workstations shouldn't even be on my computer. So i read up a little on "Windows 10 Pro for workstations" it appears he was correct. It is for high end workstations handling massive data files. So i went on to the Dell website and picked all of my components like i was going to purchase a computer like mine and as soon as i chose windows 10 Pro for workstaions and error popped up and said that it was not compatible with my processor that it required a Xeon processor. Interesting. So Dell have not offered it as an option on their two replacement options. It is $150- $200 extra for the workstation OS, but from what little i read it is of no use to me, so i am not going to push them for it.

I suggested that they should upgrade my video card to an Nvidia P2000 After some "negotiations" we have agreed that i will take option two with Nvidia Quadro P2000.

So i will be quite happy with that setup; I can add more memory or an M2. ssd PCIe card later if i feel the need.

Now its down to waiting to see if/when this deal gets done.

If it blue screens immediately like that, then I would suspect the BIOS settings. Most Windows 10 machines now require a UEFI BIOS with SecureBoot enabled. If the BIOS does not have UEFI enabled, then the system will try to boot with a non-UEFI driver and will error. See if you can find the settings in your BIOS to enable UEFI support and/or SecureBoot.

Many of the newer desktop motherboards now come with one or two M.2 slots that can accept an SSD in the form of a small card with a connector on the short edge. These M.2 drives use the PCIe interface, so they have much more bandwidth available than the SATA interface, as much as 4 times more. This won't give you 4x the speed of a SATA SSD, but they can be significantly faster in some cases.

[Mark Hennebury]

Hi Tom, I am still working on windows XP, so i am not exactly an expert on windows 10. haha.

When attempting to boot, when the Dell logo shows up, press F2 to get to the setup utility
F5 to run an onboard diagnostics.
repeat three times on/ off sequence is supposed to get you to the recover mode... didn't work for me.

I haven't had to do anything to a computer after sticking the parts together for probably over a decade now, so I've forgotten how to do a lot of this stuff. How do you get into the BIOS, in a Windows 10 computer, before the OS boots? You used to be able to do it as the system booted, but I haven't seen a prompt in a Long time. Google wasn't much help to my curiosity.

[Tom M King]

Yes, I remember how easy it was to enter BIOS at startup in OS versions before Windows 10. I haven't had to in years, so asked google for help with opening BIOS at startup with a Windows 10 computer. Looks like it's not as easy as it used to be. Some place wanted me to watch a video, but I didn't. The first thing one place said was that you could no longer get there simply by pressing F2.

A decade, or two ago, it used to require half a day of downloading this, or that, and changing jumpers, to get a computer to work after assembly. The last several went to work right away after putting them together, so I'm out of the loop on troubleshooting problems.