Hi Sylvia,
I have tried all the bioses you mentioned, and still the same issue, the keyboard is not being initialised before being presented with the F2 F7 F10 prompt.
It seems to me, that there is a logic fault in the system, where it presents the F2 etc prompt on the screen without checking that a keyboard is present.
Also, when a bootable device is not detected, one would assume that the BIOS ought to go into a failsafe mode, and find the keyboard, present the F2 option so settings can be altered in order to get a boot device recognised.
When flashing the BIOS, the keyboard IS recognised, the num lock light comes on and I can supress the message if a USB mounted BIOS is not present.
what about providing a 3rd option on the BIOS update menu, allowing to unconditionally enter the bios settings to make changes???
Unfortunately, the BIOS flashing does not affect bios settings, so what ever incorrect setting I have set in there at some point is unable to be reset. I suspect it has something to do with legacy devices.
I have managed to do some other testing, I can confirm that the USB 3 controller is operating in USB 2 mode, as transfer rates from internal mSata SSD are in the order of 22-23 Megabytes per second to "USB 3 super speed" disks. I would have expected this rate to be in the order of 3 times higher.
Also note, the issue with the Network controller is consistent across all BIOS releases that I have tried, hardware problem???
Also, I have tried both HDMI direct to monitor, and also using the mini display adapter, no difference.
Your comments appreciated.
Puppies are dying here!!! very sad.