Windows 10: How to change boot sequence to usb to boot to fresh copy of Windows 10

Good day everyone! I hope you can help me with this newbie question.

My Dell laptop has been nothing but a pain since day 1. I want to remove any possibility of this being a hardware problem by doing a fresh install with a downloaded copy of Win 10 from Microsoft, using a USB.

1) - I need to change the boot sequence to boot to USB. That's primary problem because the Bios menu seems to be different on different brands of computers. I don't understand, what exactly i'm supposed to change in the bios.
2) - Secondly, i want to ensure which partition i use, because I've tried formatting in the past, and the options of partitions has been confusing, and I've been advised to remove the Dell Recovery partition while i'm doing it. I've been advised ( in forums) to have one drive only, for everything, including startup.

Any advice is highly appreciated! Thank you

:)

 

How To Change Boot Sequence in Win 10

I recently (June 2017) bought a Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming 7567 computer with Windows 10 installed.

I have created a backup image of the OS and also burned a bootable disk so that I can reinstall Windows 10 at a future date.

My old computer (which uses Windows 7) permits me to change the boot order sequence by using the F12 key during the startup process to access the BIOS and then edit the boot order sequence so that the machine
boots from a DVD or USB drive. This makes it possible to restore a backup image from a previous date or even to use a different OS, e.g. Linux.

My problem is that the F12 key does not work on the new machine and I do not know how to create a boot order sequence that will permit me to boot from a DVD or USB drive instead of the hard drive. So at this
point, I cannot use the bootable recovery disk that I prepared. I understand that there is now UEFI technology that controls booting.

Question: How can I make make the new computer boot from a DVD or USB drive?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Richard

 

How To Change Boot Sequence in Win 10

You can boot into the UEFI firmware interface from within Windows 10, see instructions in the following article how to do so:

BIOS/UEFI Setup Guide: Boot from a CD, DVD, USB Drive or SD Card

 

I can give you some help but just making sure you aren't having issues trying to install? Or are you asking ahead of time to prevent problems?

I have a 2013 Dell myself and Dell sometimes uses different F keys to do stuff than the other makers. F2 on start up or F12 on start up gives you the options you need. There are different ways to go about it. Using Rufus over Media Creation Tool. F2 first to make sure you are in UEFI mode and not legacy, along with secure boot enabled. You want to make sure your tool (Rufus) is set up for a GPT partition rather than MBR. Rufus tool does the harder stuff for you in setup process for creating a bootable working usb version of windows. F12 will be the BIOS process you use on startup to choose usb to boot and than the windows process will start. Since you chose GPT with the Rufus tool you will be able to format the hard drive and you click on each partition and delete. Than choose the unallocated HD thats left over. This is your full hard drive. It will automatically create 4 partitions for windows 10. Plus you can make as many partitions as you want before finishing the install. So basically this makes for a faster easier clean install. I bought a used laptop and hated how some guy made a bunch of partitions and downloads over downloads and no clean install. I had like 8 or 9 partitions lol. One partition was 12 GB's wasted with nothing on it. If you use Rufus and use windows media creation for the ISO your life will be easy I promise you. Your gonna have people tell you different options and use this and that. If you want to do a fast, successful true clean install of windows without issues go with the steps I listed. The extra advanced stuff some others know just make simple things harder. A noob can do this with Rufus and a couple clicks of the button.

FYI - Just to help and make things faster. I went ahead and ran all the hardware checks I can do; along with a good full disk frag. Even ran a couple full boot utility tools just to make sure I didn't have BIOS or boot sector issues, etc. I didn't know it but found out my BIOS was really outdated. Dells website is pretty easy to use and I updated my BIOS first. Simple kind of fast process. Hope this helps and let me know if you have any other questions. I'm working on installing a inside build tonight if I can so I'll be seeing the same setup as you. Ever since Windows 10 was first released I prefer clean installs now. Its so easy these days.