What does F2 do for you on your ProX? You should be able to edit the boot order and toggle Secure Boot with F2 instead of F12. https://consumer.huawei.com/en/support/content/en-us15883571/
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/Steve. -
BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware
To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.
GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.
The participants here, who have taken the time to share their knowledge and experience, their successes and some frustrations with booting their computers into FreeDOS, have created a valuable knowledgebase which will benefit everyone who follows.
You may click on the image to the right to obtain your own copy of BootAble. Then use the knowledge and experience documented here to boot your computer(s) into FreeDOS. And please do not hesitate to ask questions – nowhere else can better answers be found.
(You may permanently close this reminder with the 'X' in the upper right.)
Many BIOS setups allow you to boot legacy bios only on external media, to allow you to boot a legacy bios on the USB drive, so that is probably the only way forward. That should at least give you a freedos environment, with the internal drives now visible as enumerated by the bios.
While I am not a heavy-duty Windows person, I have a Dell Latitude 9510 laptop running Windows 11. I have tired and tired and tried and can't figure out how to make this thing boot from USB. I have "googled" until I am blue in the face. This computer is so slow booting and doing much of anything. I am suspicious that I have the same problem Steve's wife had with her EEG computer. I have had it with this Windoze computer. My 14-year-old Macbook Pro computer with an OS no longer supported works far better than this Dell laptop that is only a few years old. So, anyone with a clue on how to get this puppy to boot from a USB stick would appreciate it. I keep reading on the Google results that it's simple; I guess my brain does not work so well on simple these days. 
I suppose you already found this document: https://www.dell.com/support/manual...c0315f-0cbf-461a-996f-54a98f99d05a&lang=en-usWhile I am not a heavy-duty Windows person, I have a Dell Latitude 9510 laptop running Windows 11. I have tired and tired and tried and can't figure out how to make this thing boot from USB. I have "googled" until I am blue in the face. This computer is so slow booting and doing much of anything. I am suspicious that I have the same problem Steve's wife had with her EEG computer. I have had it with this Windoze computer. My 14-year-old Macbook Pro computer with an OS no longer supported works far better than this Dell laptop that is only a few years old. So, anyone with a clue on how to get this puppy to boot from a USB stick would appreciate it. I keep reading on the Google results that it's simple; I guess my brain does not work so well on simple these days.
Can you get to the boot menu following these instructions?
Restart the computer, with a bootable USB flash drive plugged in, and press F12 when the Dell logo appears to display the One Time Boot Menu. Using arrow keys, select USB Storage Device and press Enter.
If no USB option is present, arrow down to BIOS Setup (or something like that) and press Enter. Look thru the "BIOS" options to see if USB booting may need to be enabled.
Please see also this Forum article: https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-boot-and-run-spinrite-6-x-on-a-uefi-machine.968/
Since this LT is running Windows 11, it is booting in UEFI mode. UEFI boot and SpinRite 6.1 are incompatible. The article above "may" provide a way to change the boot mode to CSM if your LT supports that. If so, then booting off of a bootable USB flash drive with SpinRite on it will work.
Google does NOT seem clear on this CSM support.
If no USB option is present, arrow down to BIOS Setup (or something like that) and press Enter. Look thru the "BIOS" options to see if USB booting may need to be enabled.
Please see also this Forum article: https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-boot-and-run-spinrite-6-x-on-a-uefi-machine.968/
Since this LT is running Windows 11, it is booting in UEFI mode. UEFI boot and SpinRite 6.1 are incompatible. The article above "may" provide a way to change the boot mode to CSM if your LT supports that. If so, then booting off of a bootable USB flash drive with SpinRite on it will work.
Google does NOT seem clear on this CSM support.
Getting to the menu is challenging; sometimes, F12 works, and sometimes it does not. But with a little persistence, I can get to that menu. But once there, I can't find anything that talks about boot order or anything that changes manually booting from the USB stick. I have used Spinrite from a cmd box to create the bootable USB stick. It appears to have worked just fine. But until I can get this computer even to try, I will never know.
Once I finish this, I want to figure out how to make my wife's old 2009 iMac run Spinrite. I am sure her HD needs some attention.
Yes, this computer is using UEFI. I found nothing in the settings that talked about CSM that I could find poking around. I will check the forum article and see if anything helps enable CSM. Next step is my wife's 2009 iMac.Restart the computer, with a bootable USB flash drive plugged in, and press F12 when the Dell logo appears to display the One Time Boot Menu. Using arrow keys, select USB Storage Device and press Enter.
If no USB option is present, arrow down to BIOS Setup (or something like that) and press Enter. Look thru the "BIOS" options to see if USB booting may need to be enabled.
Please see also this Forum article: https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-boot-and-run-spinrite-6-x-on-a-uefi-machine.968/
Since this LT is running Windows 11, it is booting in UEFI mode. UEFI boot and SpinRite 6.1 are incompatible. The article above "may" provide a way to change the boot mode to CSM if your LT supports that. If so, then booting off of a bootable USB flash drive with SpinRite on it will work.
Google does NOT seem clear on this CSM support.
Drat!
I forgot to mention, if a bootable SpinRite USB is plugged in when booting up in UEFI, it will NOT show up due to its incompatibility.
This could explain why you are not seeing a USB boot option.
I have had luck booting my USB SR flash drive by booting the laptop into Windows 11 (WIn 10 may be the same). Plug in the SR flashdrive then go into recovery options, advanced recovery options, then select 'use device'. For some reason this works on my Dell but trying to get it to see the flash drive prior to it doing a full boot (using F keys) it will not see the drive.
No idea what the difference is, but there is one. Hope that works!
No idea what the difference is, but there is one. Hope that works!
@markn455, in addition to the F2 / F12 keys, you can also navigate to the boot menu by going into Settings > System > Recovery and then Advanced Startup (or you can watch this video
).
I had to dig around in the Toshiba boot menu in order to find the settings for the changing the boot order (USB/HDD) and toggling secure boot (UEFI / CSM). They were not in locations that were intuitively obvious. My initial experience mirror yours. I could not figure out how to get SR 6.0 or 6.1 to run even with USB supposedly booting first until this forum and @Steve tipped me off about the UEFI / CSM secure boot toggle issue. I have to admit that the secure boot trick was one that I eluded me... and would have continued to elude me if I didn't get a nudge in the right direction.
I had to dig around in the Toshiba boot menu in order to find the settings for the changing the boot order (USB/HDD) and toggling secure boot (UEFI / CSM). They were not in locations that were intuitively obvious. My initial experience mirror yours. I could not figure out how to get SR 6.0 or 6.1 to run even with USB supposedly booting first until this forum and @Steve tipped me off about the UEFI / CSM secure boot toggle issue. I have to admit that the secure boot trick was one that I eluded me... and would have continued to elude me if I didn't get a nudge in the right direction.
@Steve even after running 6.0 and 6.1 on my Toshiba, it is still woefully slow. I don't know if the partition size matters (see https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ion-size/f30d36c0-32d7-4615-83dc-cf133b334e16). I am working on dual-boot installing Arch Linux Manjaro (I am thinking I will use KDE Plasma 5). I don't know why the Toshiba remains soooo slow....
My Dell laptop from the early 2000s has a SATA2 drive, which is just slow compared to the SATA3 drives today. The laptop works fine once it's booted. Last night, it took about 3 hours to do a level 3 on the drive with 6.1. I don't recall how long 6.0 took, but it was at least an entire day. 6.1 is noticeably faster—fast enough for me to go back and run Spinrite on drives that I didn't have enough time to do.Age maybe? I have a 2005 dell laptop with an 80 GB Toshiba HDD. SR 6.0 scan speed via the BIOS is only very, very slightly slower than SR 6.1 using it's native driver. The Intel drive controller and Toshiba drive combo in this 2005 LT is just slow.
Do you know if it is the keyboard that is faulty? Have you checked the ribbon cable connecting it to the motherboard - that may be loose/ offset? Otherwise, a replacement keyboard is typically about GBP20.
While I'm not going to crack the laptop open to check the connection (CMTCA - crisis management through crisis avoidance), I overcame the issue by using an unused spare external keyboard (cost - US$0) that I had forgotten we had. The issue is now OBE (overcome by events).
I ran SR 6.1 at both levels 2 and 3 without any subsequent perceptible changes in performance when I log into Windows 10.
The upside is that I was able to successfully dual-boot install Manjaro with KDE Plasma 5 on a new partition. Manjaro is running like a champ - Win10... eh.... still not so much! Windows 10 is still extremely sluggish.
One mystery that I am still researching is that in order to both run SR 6.0 and 6.1 as well as to install Manjaro, I had to disable Secure Boot. I kept the boot order as being USB then HDD, and I re-enabled TPM. Now if I re-enable Secure Boot, Toshiba presents the error message, “Boot failure: a proper digital signature was not found. One of the files on the selected boot device was rejected by the Secure Boot feature”.
Keep in mind that this error appeared after I installed Manjaro, so I suspect that the Toshiba does not like the partition with Manjaro.
Google Gemini suggested this path:
"Enabling Secure Boot with Manjaro (More complex):
"This method involves enrolling a key for Manjaro’s bootloader (shim) into your UEFI secure boot database. It’s a more complex process, but allows you to keep Secure Boot enabled for better security. However, it’s important to note that this is not officially supported by Manjaro."
The laptop is still usable as a dual-boot for Win 10 and Manjaro, but it is curious that Win 10 is so slow even after running SR 6.1 with no identifiable issues.
@Steve, I am now having issues getting SpinRite to run now that I dual-boot installed Manjaro Linux (with KDE Plasma 5) on the Toshiba with Windows 10.
Since the Satellite (P55W-C5316) has a Intel® Core™ i7-6500U Processor (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...-6500u-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-10-ghz.html), it is too old to boot to Windows 11.
Prior to creating the new partition and installing Manjaro, I was able to successfully run SR 6.1 at both Level 2 and Level 3.
Now, post-Manjaro installation, SR will not run when I boot up the laptop despite my previous success in doing so. The start-up boot order remains USB first then HDD. I have to keep "Secure Boot" disabled now in order for the laptop to boot up, otherwise I receive this error message: "Boot failure: a proper digital signature was not found. One of the files on the selected boot device was rejected by the Secure Boot feature". (It appears that Manjaro does not support Secure Boot, which means I have to keep Secure Boot disabled - is that statement correct?).
I unsuccessfully tried running SR with TPM enabled and disabled to no avail.
The laptop runs fine when I boot into Manjaro. It is still extremely sluggish beyond belief when I boot into Windows 10 even after running SR 6.1 last week at Level 2 and Level 3. SR 6.1 successfully completed the runs without identifying any issues.
What am I overlooking in order to run SR now in my "post-Manjaro installation and dual-boot with Win10" world?
Thanks in advance!
Since the Satellite (P55W-C5316) has a Intel® Core™ i7-6500U Processor (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...-6500u-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-10-ghz.html), it is too old to boot to Windows 11.
Prior to creating the new partition and installing Manjaro, I was able to successfully run SR 6.1 at both Level 2 and Level 3.
Now, post-Manjaro installation, SR will not run when I boot up the laptop despite my previous success in doing so. The start-up boot order remains USB first then HDD. I have to keep "Secure Boot" disabled now in order for the laptop to boot up, otherwise I receive this error message: "Boot failure: a proper digital signature was not found. One of the files on the selected boot device was rejected by the Secure Boot feature". (It appears that Manjaro does not support Secure Boot, which means I have to keep Secure Boot disabled - is that statement correct?).
I unsuccessfully tried running SR with TPM enabled and disabled to no avail.
The laptop runs fine when I boot into Manjaro. It is still extremely sluggish beyond belief when I boot into Windows 10 even after running SR 6.1 last week at Level 2 and Level 3. SR 6.1 successfully completed the runs without identifying any issues.
What am I overlooking in order to run SR now in my "post-Manjaro installation and dual-boot with Win10" world?
Thanks in advance!
You would need secure boot disabled to boot SpinRite, so that's not your issue. You also need the CSM (compatibility support module) enabled, which you probably wouldn't need enabled for other OSes to boot. That should be all it takes to get SpinRite to boot, other than taking the step(s) to tell your PC to boot from the USB device.
@PHolder, thanks! I completely spaced out about switching from UEFI to CSM - I knew I was forgetting a step. Now that I switched to CSM, SR 6.1 is up and running. I just started my SOP (standard operating procedure) so I don't forget next time.
This nuance has me wondering. Once I am done with running SR 6.1, should I leave CSM enabled instead of switching back to UEFI? The only reason I ask is that now that I added a partition so I can dual-boot Win10 and Manjaro Linux, I have to leave Secure Boot disabled for the laptop to boot up. The laptop booted up just fine in Secure Boot when I just had Win10 and prior to the Manjaro installation.
This nuance has me wondering. Once I am done with running SR 6.1, should I leave CSM enabled instead of switching back to UEFI? The only reason I ask is that now that I added a partition so I can dual-boot Win10 and Manjaro Linux, I have to leave Secure Boot disabled for the laptop to boot up. The laptop booted up just fine in Secure Boot when I just had Win10 and prior to the Manjaro installation.
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Weirdly, I ran SR 6.1 at Level 3, and it looks like my partition with Manjaro Linux got wiped out and overwritten...? Strange. I am now reinstalling Manjaro on that partition
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