something cool I learned about bios

[Matt Graham]

From: Dennis Kibbe <dennisk at linuxquestions.net>
> On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 06:45 -0700, Michael Havens wrote:
> > if you press f11 & f12 at startup it will let you temporarily choose which

> > device you want to startup with.
> The three whays I know of bringing up a boot menu are:
> 
> F12 (Dell)
> F2 (Compaq)
> ESC (Compaq, I think)
> 
> If you watch the boot process there may be a message telling you the
> correct key to press to get to the menu.

The thing that should always work is to hold down any key while the machine
is POSTing.  Then is should display "Keyboard stuck key failure, press
$FOO to enter Setup, $BAR to continue."  (This assumes the machine has a
keyboard and a monitor attached, of course.)