Trying to Wipe Drive and Reinstall Windows 10, will not boot to USB

[coover]

The laptop was running well yesterday. When I rebooted, several programs (Error Message: The file could not be accessed by the System") would not open and I could not open Update & Security in the Settings. I decided that my only recourse would be to wipe the drive and reinstall. 

I opened BIOS and tried to change the UEFI boot order to a USB Boot Stick with Version 1809 on it. I moved it to the top of the order, but their was a "carot" pointing to the "Boot Manager", which was now 2nd in the order. i tried to boot, and it booted to the Boot Manager. I tried this several times, going back into the BIOS to see if something else would work. No matter what I did, it booted to the Boot Manager. 

Any ideas?

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

While you shouldn't normally have to do this...On some models you have to go into the BIOS, enable legacy mode, and disable secure boot.

See this link for the BIOS settings to change...

https://www.support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03736054/

[coover]

Ok, Legacy Support Enabled, Secured Boot Disabled, USB Diskette on Key/USB Hard Disk chosen as 1st boot option in UEFI Boot Order chosen 1st. The only problem I see is that the carot is still shown in fron of OS Boot manager. 

The Results: It booted to Windows ... darn! 

Any ideas?

[coover]

I just cleared all the keys in the BIOS, moved OS Boot Manager to the bottom of the list, and it still boots to Windows. And the carot is still on OS Boot manager. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

There should be a legacy boot device list showing up.

Restart the PC, tap the ESC key to get the menu of options, and from that select the F9 boot options menu>legacy USB Diskette on Key/USB Hard Disk device, press the Enter key, and hopefully, the PC will boot from the flash drive.

[coover]

The only options are OS Boot Manager and EFI File

[coover]

Whoops, i forgot to mention taht after trying to boot UEFI and then lagacy, I removed the legacy option. I'll put it back in

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Interesting...with legacy mode enabled and secure boot disabled, you should get a list of legacy boot devices...just like in this discussion where the person appears to have the same issue you did.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/Recovery-disk/td-p/6890374

[coover]

OK, I enabled legacy again, booted to Esc and F9, and now have 3 options, OS Boot manager (UEFI), Boot from EFI file, and Notebook Hard Drive. No USB ooption noted. I'm about to try a DL DVD which I've just created.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yes, good move.