Inspiron mini 10 Enter BIOS Setup - SOLVED

Hi

There is a long thread 'Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Factory Restore' here: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19278283.aspx?PageIndex=1 There is also a whole pile of other stuff on the web asking how to enter the BIOS Setup on a mini 10

Notably NONE answered authoritatively by Dell. (Your BAD Dell Support ;-)

The facts are:

Inspiron mini 10s are delivered with the function keys altered in the BIOS to return values which prevent F2 from working during the post. This is despite the bottom line during the post saying press Press to Enter the BIOS Setup, to Boot device selection menu. I think in theory holding the Fn key at the same time as F2 should also work, but I don't have the patents to test it.

Once the delivered operating system is gone there is no immediate way to enter the BIOS Setup! Because the function keys are set in the BIOS to perform Multimedia functions. ( as per the symbols on the keys).

F12, on the other hand still work and (EVENTUALLY!) brings up the boot menu. The last item in the list is

Once in Setup under 'Advanced' there is 'Function Key Behaviour',  set this to 'Function' instead of 'Multimedia' and F2 now works during the post.

NB You will probably have to press F2, F12 multiple times very rapidly while the post is on screen.