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I have an old Gateway PC running Windows 10. Using F10 Start-up and also ESC Boot menu, when I try to load from either a disk or thumb drive, the system goes right to Win10. No option which OS to use. I have no idea what to do; this is the first time that I have tried to use linux. Any help? Thanks.

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    Its a total hack, but if you remove the CPU battery, you are pretty much guaranteed to get into the BIOS. The delete button is a good guess to get in the bios.
    – j0h
    Oct 28, 2015 at 22:27

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Check the PC's BIOS boot order options. The specifics of how to do that vary from BIOS to BIOS, but they boil down to this:

  1. Restart the system and immediately press F1, then F2, ... F12 to get the BIOS setup screen. Sometimes it is Esc. It could be faster to refer to the manufacturer's information for the right button to press. There are only a few seconds (2–5) during which this is valid. If you don't try in time, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reset and try again.
  2. Look through the menus for the Boot option. Change it so that the USB ports are tried (to look for a bootable image) before the hard drive.
  3. Save the revised BIOS settings and reboot.
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  • ESC is in fact the BIOS/Boot menu. The systems just doesn't see the CD/ROM although it is the first device. (The USB thumb drive doesn't even show up.) So the problem is the computer. Maybe I'll try another computer in the future. Many thanks.
    – user466175
    Oct 30, 2015 at 17:26
  • @user466175: Many old systems did not offer bootable USB support. Not sure where the cutoff is, but it is probably around 2005.
    – wallyk
    Oct 30, 2015 at 18:01

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