External Keyboards Pause Key Does Not Work During Boot On Inspiron 14 3420 Laptops

Summary: This article describes why the Pause Key does not function on an external keyboard while booting your Inspiron 14 3420 laptop.

This article applies to This article does not apply to This article is not tied to any specific product. Not all product versions are identified in this article.
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Symptoms

Pressing the Pause key on an external keyboard during boot or the power-on self-test (POST) has no effect. The laptop boots into the operating system with no other issues.

Cause

This is a Qualcomm SC8180 limitation. The integrated keyboard does not have a Pause key.

Resolution

This is the expected behavior on this platform and hardware.

Workaround:

  1. The unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI) boot time is approximately four seconds. Press the F2 key to enter the BIOS setup, or the F12 key to enter the Boot menu. The BIOS and Boot menu includes an option to pause the boot process.

  2. Press the Esc key to exit BIOS setup or the Boot menu and then resume the boot process.

Affected Products

Inspiron 14 3420
Article Properties
Article Number: 000204897
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 17 Nov 2025
Version:  3
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