none of the f-keys work to get into boot menu or bios

Question

I have a lenovo V570. I had a dual boot of ubuntu/windows8 using GRUB. I happened to mess up my ubuntu system and the ubuntu option has disappeared from the GRUB menu. I still have the ubuntu flash drive but I'm not able to boot into it. I had done it before when originally installing ubuntu, but now it seems to not work. I've tried booting it 20+ times with each of the F1-F12 keys, Esc, Del, but nothing seems to work. It loads into the GRUB boot loader as usual. I'm wondering if somehow GRUB is interfering with this or not. Can somebody please tell me how I can get into the BIOS boot menu where I can boot from flash drive?

Answer 1

Try the below steps to get into BIOS,

1. Perform a Power Drain

   Remove the battery and Power cable

   Press the power button for 5+ seconds to drain the leftout power

   Now insert Battery, turn on the laptop and try hitting F1 to enter BIOS

If the above method fails,

2. Completely shutdown the notebook by holding down the power button for 5+ seconds.

Then, turn it back on and once you see the Lenovo logo for the first time, press enter then you'll get a menu of options, one being to enter the bios.

Answer 2

On some notebooks keeping esc key pressed during poweron give access to bios messages and f-keys

Answer 3

From the manual for your notebook:

"To enter BIOS setup utility, press F2 when the Lenovo logo appears on the screen while the computer is starting up."

Additionally (from the manual):

"Press F12 when the Lenovo logo appears on the screen while the computer is starting up to select the device you want the computer starts from."

GRUB can't override the BIOS so you're probably just not timing it right (BIOSs are fast these days).