HELP! I Cant access BIOS menu during windows 11 start

[canonmasta]

Good evening. I happened to buy a hard drive to install windows 11 on my Thinkpad X230. Everything went fine. I have installed it successfully, but as I also wanted Linux Mint installed, when trying to access during boot to the Bios menu, it is impossible. Neither to the F12 boot menu. Sometimes the text under the ThinkPad logo appears fleetingly but most of the time it does not. I have another hard disk with which I boot windows 10 and linux and there I can enter the BIOS without any problem Do you know what could be the reason? Thank you very much in advance.

[dr_st]

Disable "Fast Startup" in your Windows 11. With it on (which is the default), Windows doesn't shut down, instead it hibernates, and when resuming from hibernation, the BIOS does not go through the full startup cycle, which among other things, provides the window during which you can access BIOS / boot menu.

[canonmasta]

Woa! Thank You very very much!

I'll try it

[canonmasta]

Woa! Thank You very very much!

I'll try it

you were ritght. Problem solved!

[dr_st]

Glad it helped!

On Thinkpads where I don't feel like disabling fast startup, I use a different trick - I put a power-on or hard-drive password (which I want to do anyway). The password prompt comes up even if the laptop is resuming from hibernation. If you turn the computer off at the prompt, by holding the power button, then back on - the next time the full POST cycle will happen, allowing BIOS access. After which, the OS will still resume as if from fast startup.

[Brad]

You could also hold down the SHIFT key while shutting down which disables shutdown hibernation.

Brad

[onespeedbiker]

Okay an old post, but assuming you want to use fast start up, every time you choose the restart function it disables fast start up when Windows reboots (this is a feature in the event you are changing Windows configuration and need to install new drivers). IOW, if you want to access the bios/ boot menu allow the computer to boot with the default HDD, then at the sign in screen chose to restart the computer (lower right hand corner after the sign in box appears) then tap the access key when it reboots.