Hello! Today I ran into a problem when the BIOS does not see my bootable USB flash drive in the BOOT MENU. Although I did everything according to the standard: I inserted a USB flash drive, launched the boot menu, but the media was not there. At first I thought that the problem lay with my BIOS version, but it turned out that the version does not affect this in any way, and whether you have at least AWARDS, AMI, new UEFI or old BIOS, there may be one problem.

The solution lies in a special mode that can be supported or even disabled in the mini system. More on this below.

The reasons
Modern laptops and computers work with two boot modes from external media: EFI and Legacy. The problem may be if the flash drive may not work with one of the modes. Since we have only two modes, it is clear that only one can work, and by default it is set depending on the type of microsystem.

If during formatting the mode was selected for installation in EFI mode, then there is a possibility that such a BIOS will not see the bootable USB flash drive. And there are solutions:

Activate the desired mode in the BIOS.
Overwrite the bootable media in the desired mode. But one more thing needs to be said - there are some images that initially can only work with Legacy mode. This is especially true for older systems such as Windows XP or some builds of Windows 7 and Live CD.
First solution
In the first case, you need to go to BIOS or UEFI. To do this, when you turn on or restart the system, you need to hold down the auxiliary key. A prompt with the desired key is usually displayed on the home screen. Very often they use such keys as Del, F2, Esc, F11, F12, F10, F9.

On newer UEFI systems, you need to find Legacy support and enable it in the "Enabled" position.

BIOS does not see the USB flash drive in the Boot Menu: 2 solutions to the problem

In the BIOS, you can enable both modes. Usually the required item is located in the "Advanced" or "Boot" section. Here you will need to look, since everyone's firmware may be different. But you shouldn't worry, because the BIOS is usually not as big as it seems at first glance.

BIOS does not see the USB flash drive in the Boot Menu: 2 solutions to the problem

Second solution
Now let's look at the second option, namely overwriting the flash drive. In fact, you need to recreate the USB flash drive with parameters that will be supported by your BIOS. But remember that if you record an image that was not downloaded from the official site, then you will additionally need to disable the "Secure Boot" mode in UEFI when installing it in the BIOS.

BIOS does not see the USB flash drive in the Boot Menu: 2 solutions to the problem

But let's get back to the ways to create a USB stick. We have two options that we can take advantage of:

If you want to create a Windows 10 installer, the easiest way to do this is using the official Installation Media Creation Tool - it will create exactly the image that will be supported by all modes. The instructions for using this utility can be found here .

With regards to the career viewpoint for the computer network support experts, with more and more organizations getting onto a digital platform.

The second option is to use the free Rufus program. The most important thing is to set the correct recording mode in the line "Partition scheme and type of system interface":
Legacy - MBR for computers with BIOS or UEFI-CSM.
EFI - GPT for computers with UEFI.
BIOS does not see the USB flash drive in the Boot Menu: 2 solutions to the problem

In the second option, you just have to select the image and specify the media. After that, click on the "Start" button and wait for the procedure to end.