Unable to enter bios from boot screen.

[Josh214]

Well I had run into some trouble with my video card, and it had to be replaced. Before doing this though I was prompted to try a System Recovery to get rid of any possible program that was causing the symptoms of a faulty Video Card.

Well I replaced the Video Card and everything was fixed. But... due to the system recovery some of my changed settings in Bios we reverted back to default. I remember specifically going into Bios to disable the action keys (Fn + whatever F key that did something).

Problem is now I can't get back into the Bios to change the settings once again.

To clear up a few of the simplier suggestions I have already tried:

Using another keyboard (lets me go into setup, system recovery, diagnostics, etc just fine just not Bios)

Unplugging everything in the back but monitor and keyboard

Cleared the CMOS, which brought me to a screen saying my Bios is being set to default and to go to setup press F10. But pressing F10 brought me to the setup screen alone and couldn't get into BIOS.

I've thoroughly searched the internet for answers to solve this problem, but I have truely hit a dead end.

I mean I know I changed the setting before on this computer its just I can't remember how. I mean I've tried F1, F2, Del, Ctrl + Alt and everything inbetween for the hotkeys to enter BIOS to no avail.

Thanks in advance for your response looking forward to recieving an answer.

Oh and I have a HP Pavilion Slimline s5260f, if that helps any.

[wb2001]

Josh,

Maybe your not hitting F10 immediately (repeatedly) at power-on.

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c02034870

[Josh214]

Nah the problem isn't that, I mean when the computer starts up I can enter Setup (by pressing F10) System Recovery (F11) Diagonstics (F9) and 1 other i forget. I can get into all those easily. Problem is the BIOS isn't under any of these and I've tried all the Shortcuts listed like F1 and F2, Esc, Ctrl + Alt, and everything inbetween. None of these have worked however.

I mean I've heard of the BIOS be basically out of reach to the user on some models, but I've changed the settings before on this computer so I know I can access them. Problem is i don't know how to get there.

[wb2001]

Something is amiss, as F10 is supposed to be BIOS utility.

"To open the BIOS Setup utility, turn on the computer and immediately press the F10 key repeatedly, about once every second, until the BIOS setup utility screen opens".

[Josh214]

When I press F10 it brings me to a setup screen, but this setup screen is definitely not BIOS. There are several Tabs up top being: Main, Advanced,and two others that don't help me. I've searched everywhere in Setup to no avail. 

[Josh214]

I'm starting to think that maybe this is the computer's BIOS, but its not as advanced as I'm looking for. I want to change specific options like the system configuration, etc. Whats being shown is too limited for what I need to do. Any idea how I would go about getting into the system configuration?

[Josh214 · Accepted solution]

Well fiddling around with stuff I fixed my problem. Thing is I actually couldn't get to what I wanted through the BIOS screen. What I do remember though is doing it on my friends computer to get rid of that, where their BIOS had more options.

As for anyone having my problem (accidentally hitting Fn and the sleep key) I recommend you go into Power Options from Control Panel-then select Do Nothing for hitting the Sleep Button.

[tpec]

I know I'm replying to an old thread, but since there was no conclusive solution to this problem I will share the info I have gathered.

I had a different HP laptop (ProBook 4730s to be exact), but the same symptoms as Josh214 - no matter what option you chose on the BIOS startup screen, the laptop would always go into recovery mode with no option to access the BIOS itself.

For me, this happened when I had a working UEFI installation of Windows 8 and then reset the BIOS to its default settings - this has switched the BIOS from UEFI to legacy mode, and since the disk had a GPT partition scheme, the whole thing became unbootable.

It turns out the Recovery-only problem on this laptop happens when:

• the hard drive is unreadable (due to bad sectors)
• there is no hard drive installed
• there is an invalid partitioning scheme (GPT instead of MBR when in legacy mode or an invalid MBR)

For me, the solution was to remove the hard drive from the laptop and plug it into a working Windows machine, from which I then ran diskpart and cleaned the disk.

You will loose all of your data on the laptops hard drive, so you should back up your files before you do that.

More info on how to clean the hard drive using diskpart.

However, if you have a working Windows installation media, you can try to boot that on your laptop, and when the initial setup dialog appears (Language, Keyboard settings etc), select your keyboard layout, click next and then "Install now". At this point (usually you are presented with license information) you have the correct keyboard layout set up.

From there press Shift+F10 which will open a command prompt and from there you can run diskpart the same way.

It saves you the hassle of having to remove the hard drive from the laptop.

The same thing could probably be done by using a bootable linux cd/usb and wiping the first couple MB with dd.

Hope this helps.

(Corrected the instructions for obtaining the correct keyboard layout)