Machine in EFI

O

Oldviking

Member
I need to change only the boot order but Easybcd has indicated that my machine (Dell with Win 10) is in EFI mode and therefore Easybcd
features are disabled. How can I change my boot order so I can be prepared to boot to DVD or USB after a crash or bad drive? I appreciate any advise.

Thanks

John
 
If I understand you correctly, you want the PC to boot from Optical drive in preference to HDD if you start up with a bootable disc in the tray ?
If so, that's nothing to do with EasyBCD.
EasyBCD affects the contents of the BCD in accordance with your instructions, but the BCD is on the HDD and isn't referenced until after the BIOS has already chosen (and chained to) the preferred boot drive.
What you need to do is interrupt the power-up at the splash screen (probably "del" key, but somewhere on the splash screen it will tell you) and enter the PC BIOS edit utility.
In there, set DVD (and USB if desired) to have a higher priority than HDD in the boot sequence (In the boot tab).
I know that Dell are strangely reluctant to allow the user to alter the priority sequence within the HDD list, but as far as I'm aware, there shouldn't be a problem placing optical above all HDDs.
 
Hi Terry,
Thanks for the reply. I do want to change the boot order and am familiar with earlier F2 to change Bios but Win 10 has changed it. Now I cannot get to the Bios. I have followed the procedure as outlined in several articles on the Web but cannot get to the Bios settings. I was hoping that EasyBCD would help me do that but it also gives me the message
"that my machine (Dell with Win 10) is in EFI mode and therefore Easybcd
features are disabled. " I have adequate backups but they are useless unless I am able to boot into the machine from USB or DVD when needed. I like to be prepared! ANy other thoughts? Thanks John
 
W10 is as irrelevant to your problem as EasyBCD.
At power up, the following things happen

1.After pressing the power button, the PC’s firmware initiates a Power-On Self Test (POST) and loads firmware settings. This pre-boot process ends when a valid system disk is detected.
2.Firmware reads the master boot record (MBR), and then starts Bootmgr.exe. Bootmgr.exe finds and starts the Windows loader (Winload.exe) on the Windows boot partition.
3.Essential drivers required to start the Windows kernel are loaded and the kernel starts to run, loading into memory the system registry hive and additional drivers that are marked as BOOT_START.
4.The kernel passes control to the session manager process (Smss.exe) which initializes the system session, and loads and starts the devices and drivers that are not marked BOOT_START.
5.Winlogon.exe starts, the user logon screen appears, the service control manager starts services, and any Group Policy scripts are run. When the user logs in, Windows creates a session for that user.
6.Explorer.exe starts, the system creates the desktop window manager (DWM) process, which initializes the desktop and displays it.

EasyBCD is not available till step 6 completes
W10's first action is when bootmgr is chained in step 2

Entering the BIOS update utility happens during step 1.
F2 is the normal BIOS interrupy key for Dell according to web search

Dell
XPS, Dimension, Inspiron, Latitude, OptiPlex, Precision, Alienware, Vostro

  • Press F2 when the Dell logo appears. Press every few seconds until the message Entering Setup appears.
  • Older Dell desktops and laptops may instead use Ctrl+Alt+Enter or Del to enter BIOS.
  • Older Dell laptops may use Fn+Esc or Fn+F1.
But I've found references to problems where the keyboard is not being detected early enough to be used for this purpose.
Make sure your keyboard is connected via one of the mobo USB ports, not a remote hub, and use a USB2 port rather than USB3.
 
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