Solving Windows 10 Problems with Booting from a CD

I recently did a Clonezilla backup of my Lenovo W541 and had problems getting it to recognize the F12 key that you have to press during the boot process to bring up the boot selection menu. It turned out to be a problem caused by the “fast startup” or “hybrid boot” feature in Windows 10. To boot from a CD by pressing F12 during boot (or to enter the BIOS settings by pressing F1) you will first need to disable “fast startup.”

To disable Fast Startup, go to the Power Settings page shown in Figure 1, and select the “Advanced power settings” dialog link at the bottom of the panel under “Related settings,” then select “Choose what the power buttons do” on the left side of the panel as shown in Figure 2. Next, select the “Change additional options that are not shown” link at the top as shown in Figure 3; this will activate the options at the bottom of the page. Un-check the “hybrid boot” option as shown in Figure 4. You should be able to use use F12 to get to the boot selection menu. If you get a message that the operating system was not recognized, you will need to enter the BIOS settings (press F1 during boot) and temporarily disable the Secure Boot setting in the security tab. Make sure to re-enable Secure Boot in the BIOS when you are finished with your Clonezilla backup.