Boot From External USB Drive or USB Stick

If you only need to do this once or very occasionally, just press the F12 button during boot to access the one-time boot menu.  As long as your device was already connected when the system started, it should show up there.  If you'll want to boot from that device on a fairly regular basis, then on a UEFI system you can't just add a USB device to the boot order.  Boot options for local storage on a UEFI system are specified as a path to a specific bootloader file on a specific partition of a specific device, so you'd have to go to the boot order, click Add Boot Option, then click the Browse button and select the appropriate bootloader file.  The standard path to a bootloader file defined in the UEFI spec is \EFI\Boot\Bootx64.efi, and USB devices that use that file name at that path are automatically detected as bootable in places like the F12 one-time boot menu, but technically the bootloader path can be anything if you'll be "registering" it into the UEFI bootloader.  On Windows for example, bootable media for installing the OS uses the standard bootloader file path, but an installed version of Windows uses something else, and that works because Windows Setup handles registering that non-standard path into the UEFI firmware.  I don't know Linux very well, so I don't know what's normal for that setup, but hopefully this gets you started!

The basic and the simplest way is F12 whenever you want to boot through a external source/os. F12 on the Dell Logo, you will see one time boot menu, select the device which you have connected - USB Hard Drive / Flash Drive , Make sure you have already installed the OS in that drive earlier.

lnspiron 15 3000

I have a dell 15-3567 that i just replaced the Hard drive in. I am using aomei restoretool as i have been doing incremental backup images to an external hard drive daily. I created a winPE bootable media os a USB drive. when if use the f12 key ro access what is shown is

UEFI BOOT

       Windows Boot Manager

OTHER OPTIONS

       BIOS setup

       Bios Flash Update

       Diognostics

      Change Boot Mode Settings

i looked in all these and the Usb is nowhere to be found

any suggestions

@845value  If your system is set to boot in UEFI mode, which it appears to be and should be, then make sure the flash drive is formatted as FAT32 rather than NTFS.  The UEFI spec leaves support for booting from NTFS volumes as optional, and consequently that support isn't widely implemented.  But FAT32 support is mandatory.  (This is why Windows disks set up for UEFI booting have a small FAT32 partition, which contains the bootloader that then turns around and boots Windows from the NTFS partition.)

the device is not shown

any other suggestions?

If it's the same question, the answer really needs to come from the publisher of the Linux distribution.

The Dell side:  prepare a UEFI-bootable flash drive using the distribution. Press F12 at powerup with the drive connected, and if it's UEFI-bootable, it will appear in the boot list.  Select it and you're all set.

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Dell has terrible support.  Even when you pay extra for it.  Such a simple question posted here and Dell has no answer for it.  That tells so much about Dell.

---

These forums are user-to-user. NOT Dell technical support.

@jphughan​ I'll try cause the pen is going to the 16.04 factory OS or the mint command line