This is a problem with some back-story so let me start there. I recently bought a Dell mini, which has functioned perfectly for what I needed it to do.
Problem: I slipped on a patch of ice and dropped aforementioned mini, bouncing on its corners, down a nice long set of stone steps.
Miraculously the computer still works, in fact I haven’t noticed any difference in performance. But I am still a bit afraid that it may have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. So I decided to run a surface scan and see if there was any hidden damage. I have a live Ubuntu iso on a USB stick (minis have no CD drives) and was attempting to boot from it when I discovered problem number two: the F keys are all function keys on the mini and the function button does not appear to work until the computer is fully booted. Or at least that’s the only logical explanation I can see.
Long story short, it appears physically impossible to access the BIOS as I am booting. So my question is: can I change the order of boot devices from fully booted XP?
