I received my XPS 8500 special - 256gb solid state drive for the OS, in November 2012 but was unable to start using it until about Feb 25, 2013.

I started the machine and was welcomed with:

“No boot device available. Strike the F1 key to retry boot, F2 to run the setup utility.

I kept hitting F1 and finally it booted. This happened each time I shut down and rebooted. I entered Setup and changed nothing after which it was hit and miss if it would boot or if I had to play with F1.

I upgraded to Win8 Pro - not sure if this had any bearing on the problem but it boots all the time now.

I cannot boot from a DVD and I need to to get a dump to fix a cross indexing problem between a hidden partition (ESP) and the other partitions on my drive (full system image using Paragon HDM12).

I went into setup to check the boot order (factory set) and it does not look like anything I have ever seen (not a techie but not an idiot either).

The boot sequence is not like those I have worked with before (previous Dells, or others).
The main boot device shows "windows boot manager" with a note that all other devices in parentheses have been disabled - everything else
listed is in parentheses.

How do I boot from an external device?  After reading all the "stuff" on this forum I am afraid to change anything for fear I will lose it all before I get a good image of my drives current state - after loading my programs, upgrading to pro, etc the last thing I want to do is start over with a factory image restore.

I do not get a boot menu when pressing f12 or any other f keys or combination of keys I am aware of Dell using in the past. How do I get to the boot menu?