Question Cannot boot to the boot menu ?

[beauknowsdiddly]

Hey everyone,
I have an old Asus M578LM mobo that I can not get to load into the boot menu. I know it's F8. but it just keeps booting to Windows. If I press delete I can boot into the bios. I'm trying to boot from a USB drive which I can see under the hard drives in the BIOS. I can make that the priority but it won't boot to the correct partition on that drive. I HAVE to get into the boot menu to change the partition. How on earth can I get the boot menu to come up???? I tried holding escape while hitting power, that doesn't work either.

 

[Lutfij]

See if this reddit post helps. Ofc, I'm assuming that the USB you're trying to boot off of is actually bootable and that your BIOS is on the latest version.'

If not, you might want to elaborate which partition you're trying to boot off of.

 

[beauknowsdiddly]

See if this reddit post helps. Ofc, I'm assuming that the USB you're trying to boot off of is actually bootable and that your BIOS is on the latest version.'

If not, you might want to elaborate which partition you're trying to boot off of.

I'll check it out thank you! I've been attempting to update my BIOS but I can't seem to boot to the EZ flash option either and I'm not finding an option in bios to update it from there.

 

[BFG-9000]

As you'd expect from something so old, the USB drive must be pretty small to be recognized, try 32GB or less and FAT32 (FAT16 is supported up to 2GB)

Only one partition on any disk can be the active one and you don't use any boot menu to change it, but some disk partitioning utility. If it's just a BIOS file on an otherwise empty drive then that's not supposed to be bootable.

The built-in EZ Flash 2 utility is outside of the BIOS and accessed with ALT-F2 during POST instead of the DEL you would use to enter the BIOS. There's supposed to be a message at the bottom of the screen to indicate this, but modern monitors may not auto-resize quickly enough to see it.

I know it's F8. but it just keeps booting to Windows.

In their infinite wisdom Microsoft have decided Windows never breaks so have disabled the F8 boot menu.
To restore the F8 functionality of previous versions of Windows,
Open an administrator Command Prompt and enter:
bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy
You will receive the message "The operation completed successfully"
That should make getting to the startup menu much easier in the future, but it still won't let you boot from a non-active partition

 

[SkyNetRising]

I can make that the priority but it won't boot to the correct partition on that drive. I HAVE to get into the boot menu to change the partition. How on earth can I get the boot menu to come up????

You can boot only from Primary Active partition on MBR disk and
only from EFI system partition on GPT disk.
No BIOS options will allow you booting from any other partition.

 

[beauknowsdiddly]

As you'd expect from something so old, the USB drive must be pretty small to be recognized, try 32GB or less and FAT32 (FAT16 is supported up to 2GB)

Only one partition on any disk can be the active one and you don't use any boot menu to change it, but some disk partitioning utility. If it's just a BIOS file on an otherwise empty drive then that's not supposed to be bootable.

The built-in EZ Flash 2 utility is outside of the BIOS and accessed with ALT-F2 during POST instead of the DEL you would use to enter the BIOS. There's supposed to be a message at the bottom of the screen to indicate this, but modern monitors may not auto-resize quickly enough to see it.


In their infinite wisdom Microsoft have decided Windows never breaks so have disabled the F8 boot menu.
To restore the F8 functionality of previous versions of Windows,
Open an administrator Command Prompt and enter:
bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy
You will receive the message "The operation completed successfully"
That should make getting to the startup menu much easier in the future, but it still won't let you boot from a non-active partition

Thank you BFG! I do see the menu at the bottom and it does say alt+f2 for ez flash 2 but that doesn't open either. However, I can get to the ez flash 2 option from the tools menu in the bios. But no matter which update I download and put on my flash drive when I attempt to run if from ez flash 2 it says "no update module found in file"

I also copied and pasted the command bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy and it said it completed successfully, but still f8 does not bring up the boot menu

The USB drive I'm booting from is an OS that I use for work, which has a few partitions and for whatever reason it's always booted to the wrong partition. I just have to change it in the boot menu which I have been doing for probably a year now on my other PC. I just have to use this older PC for a bit. I somehow HAVE to get that boot menu to load.