Rufus (Bootable USB Drive software) "Press any key to boot from USB" question

[mightymo77]

I'm using Rufus 2.8.886 along with a Windows image, and multiple PNY Attache 64GB USB 3.0 flash drives. I noticed on some machines, including my main desktop, the BIOS sees the flash drive however will not boot from it. When l I chose the "Add fixes for old BIOSes" option in Rufus it did finally boot, but I noticed I lost the ability to "press any key to boot from USB". I then formatted the flash drive again, this time checking the "add fixes for old BIOSes" option as well as the "Use Rufus MB with BIOS ID" option, and still did not receive the press any key prompt. Anyone know how to fix this?

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

At a guess, I would think that Akeo Consulting disabled the "press any key" option when enabling those various fixes in order to ensure that a computer would boot from the USB flash drive created when selecting those options in Rufus.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

[Appzalien]

Even when I set my bios to boot from other or removable drives I do not get the press any button to boot from usb anymore on one of my machines that had Vista and then Win7. I don't know if its the motherboard, bios or the OS but what I have to do to boot from usb now on this machine is to start like I'm going into safe mode (F8 in my case). When I do that I first get a screen that asks which drive I want to use. Typically when I go into safe mode for a system restore or something I would then select my main drive and then click on the F8 key again very quickly and that would get me to the safe mode selection screen. What I didn't realize at the time was that's where I wanted to be to boot from my usb flash drive. So I would hit F8 continuously and the selection screen would show and bingo on the selection screen was listed my usb flash boot drive. Then clicking on that would launch memtest or what ever I was trying to run from the flash drive. On most of my older XP machines hitting F8 got me straight to the safe mode screen but not this one, it goes to a drive selection first and you have to hit F8 again to get to the screen. Since I have never had XP on this particular PC I can't say if its the OS and the machines I have that still have XP have motherboards that are at least 6-8 years old.

[Rippleman]

I have noticed in the past that, if your hard drive is blank, the bootable usb assumes that you DO want to boot from USB to install an OS. If there is one (or similar) then it will ask "press a key" since it doesn't know what you want and will give you the option. If your hard drive is already blank, it will skip and get you right into it.

[mightymo77]

13 hours ago, Rippleman said:

I have noticed in the past that, if your hard drive is blank, the bootable usb assumes that you DO want to boot from USB to install an OS. If there is one (or similar) then it will ask "press a key" since it doesn't know what you want and will give you the option. If your hard drive is already blank, it will skip and get you right into it.

 

I think the reason for this is because since there was no OS on your hard drive, the BIOS moved to the next bootable device in line, which was your flash drive. I think +goretsky was probably right with what he said the issue was. I wish Rufus had an official forum.

 

[mightymo77]

I just tried my flash drive on an Asus A550C which is a laptop from 2013, and I DID get the "press any key to boot from USB" prompt. So it is in fact controlled by the BIOS/motherboard, and not Rufus. That is very good to know. So with that being said, I wonder why the "Add fixes for old BIOSes" within Rufus is not enabled by default, just in case, you know?

[Mando]

On 12/04/2016 at 8:21 PM, Rippleman said:

I have noticed in the past that, if your hard drive is blank, the bootable usb assumes that you DO want to boot from USB to install an OS. If there is one (or similar) then it will ask "press a key" since it doesn't know what you want and will give you the option. If your hard drive is already blank, it will skip and get you right into it.

i noticed this exact behaviour installing linux mint to this laptop after wiping all partitions on the ssd, I thought it was just a flakey setup........:)