Vista - F8 on boot doesn't bring up advanced boot options

I'm running Home Premium x64 on an Acer Aspire 6935 (Core2 Duo T6600 @ 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM) and Vista is running just fine. Knowing that won't always be the case, though, I decided to check out the Advanced Boot Options.

Problem is, I can't. No amount of F8-ing on boot does anything, be it continuous pressing or tapping every second or two. And I start from the BIOS screen itself.

I know Vista can do it on its own -- it went to the Advanced Boot Options once on its own volition, after the system froze on me (only happened once), so the ABO itself is not damaged.

What am I doing wrong here? What alternatives are there to F8, besides setting the relevant option in MSCONFIG? (That's something I won't be able to do if I ever need the advanced boot options because Vista won't load on its own).

Thanks in advance!

Has your desktop got a fingerprint scanner?

It's a notebook, actually, but yes, it does indeed have a fingerprint scanner.

Can you turn off the fingerprint scanner in your BIOS?
If so turn it off then try the F8 option.

No such luck. Being an OEM notebook BIOS it has about 3 things that can be configured.

What's the deal with the fingerprint reader, anyway? Is Vista mistaking it for the keyboard or something?

Hi Singleton,

Have a look through these guides to see if anything can help you.

Quick Start Guide http://gd-download.acer-euro.com/GDF...46612249150488
User Manual http://gd-download.acer-euro.com/GDF...46694786956080

Has acer provided you with emergency disk, if so then you may have to boot from cd to get to the recovery screen manually.
The reason I asked about the fingerprint scanner is because pressing F8 may be a way around security that acer does not want to happen.

Ah, I hadn't thought of the possibility that this might be intentional on Acer's part. I suppose that's possible, though.

I still can't help but wonder if my keyboard is even being recognized properly by Vista at that early stage of the boot process -- there are more than a few other devices on the USB bus, such as the trackpad, the fingerprint reader, the built-in webcam and an external mouse. And the only thing I can remove is the external mouse.

The time I did get the advanced boot options screen --due to a system freeze-up-- I could navegate the menus just fine. But that was quite a bit later than the period when you're supposed to hit F8.

Perhaps the best thing would be to always have a menu offering the ABOs show on boot, and giving it a short time-out, like 5 seconds.

Can I just modify boot.ini for that?

I asked aloud: "Can I just modify boot.ini?".

As I started researching that, I decided to have a look at my current boot.ini. Well, it turns out I have no boot.ini! I can find it neither by looking (with view hidden and system files turned on), nor by searching, nor through EasyBCD, which complains that it can't find boot.ini either.

Now, I've only recently switched over from XP to Vista, so maybe there's something I'm missing, but as I understand it I should not be able to boot up at all without this file.

And yet, here I am... How can that be accounted for?

(And by the way, I've scanned my entire system for viruses and malware with several different apps).

Putzing around here and elsewhere, I managed to find an acceptable (though not perfect) solution. I used EasyBCD to create a new boot entry (where it's stored I don't know, as it seems Vista doesn't use boot.ini), and I set the automatic selection delay to 5 seconds.

Now, when I boot I get a brief menu allowing me to choose between the two Vista boot options (to give them a bit of usefulness, I set one to normal and the other to SOS). If I hit F8 *there*, I do get the advanced boot options to show, and if I do nothing the boot process continues as normal in a few seconds.

F8 still doesn't work before the boot menu appears, nor after it's gone, but now I have a practical workaround that lets me control the system better.

Many thanks to you both for your help!