Make sure the flash drive is connected when you start the PC, then press F12 while you see the Dell logo displayed, which will bring up a one-time boot menu to select an alternate boot device. That’s much more convenient than rearranging your boot order for a single boot. Disabling Secure Boot will not make your system unbootable. However, ENABLING it can if the OS you use doesn’t support it, and switching between Legacy and UEFI boot mode definitely can.
All that said, don’t rely on the Dell Recovery media. If something happens to your system, you’d probably rather roll back to a point shortly before the incident rather than going all the way back to the factory state, in which case use a tool like Macrium Reflect (it has free and paid versions) to capture full system images on a regular basis so you can restore from those if needed.
jphughan
9 Legend
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14K Posts
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November 23rd, 2017 22:00
Make sure the flash drive is connected when you start the PC, then press F12 while you see the Dell logo displayed, which will bring up a one-time boot menu to select an alternate boot device. That’s much more convenient than rearranging your boot order for a single boot. Disabling Secure Boot will not make your system unbootable. However, ENABLING it can if the OS you use doesn’t support it, and switching between Legacy and UEFI boot mode definitely can.
All that said, don’t rely on the Dell Recovery media. If something happens to your system, you’d probably rather roll back to a point shortly before the incident rather than going all the way back to the factory state, in which case use a tool like Macrium Reflect (it has free and paid versions) to capture full system images on a regular basis so you can restore from those if needed.