7010 will not boot uEFI USB

I have 7010 End of life Dell desktop, it is just a bit newer than 790 which was Dell's first Optiplex to have UEFI in bios, a primitive ver. then.

the reason why your USB is not detected as a boot device is related to the UEFI being primitive and not user friendly.

what you can try is to reset BIOS to factory default and try to remove all current Boot Sequence listing.

next make sure you prepare a UEFI bootable USB by using Microsoft installation media tool.  even if you think you have one already, just make a fresh one to be sure.

connect it to PC then power on and F2 to enter BIOS.

you need to add boot option.

click the "add boot option"

try find the efi>boot>bootx64.efi

click it

done

exit bios

now F12 after restart, it shows UEFI> USB: in boot option

Thank you.  I kept reading and found an allusion to such and tried it.  I created new boot options as you said, pointing to the bootx54.efi on the USB.  It behaved the same.

What I did NOT do was to remove all of the old options.  I will try that tomorrow, so it is clean.

I am puzzled by the list of paths in the "Add" dialog between the Name of the new option (at the top) and the "File name" browsing thing at the bottom.  Do you know what purpose these serve?  You cannot select one, or delete them from there, and they are cut off because the box is too narrow.  I just ignored them.

Also I neglected to mention, I am not trying to make a windows installer (Which seems to be the goal of most or all people with this problem!).  I have a USB image that I bought from Passmark for memtest86 Pro.  It works fine on other machines.

Again I will delete *EVERYTHING* and make a single new on 5/15 (Soon to be today).  I will reset to defaults first.  It does get confused at time and will not let me change anything until I do that.  I have reset a few times while experimenting.

Again, thank you, and please forward and further thoughts.  I will report back.

--Ray

to test the ability of your pc to detect an authentic bootable UEFI USB, try prepare a Win 10 or 11 installation media USB.  If that USB works but your original USB image still not, the issue is with that image.

Good idea.  Cannot try for a few days, thank you.

I have since tried deleting ALL "boot options", then rebooting hoping to avoid flakey bookkeeping, creating the one I need, then booting it.  Same results.

I then tried using BOOTIA32.efi instead of BOOTX64.efi (Hey, you never know).  Same results, but curiously the "dark gray" screen would come on for 1/2 second, then go true black for 1/2 second, then return to dark gray and sit there, just like the BOOTX64.efi did.

One way to clear and reset bios settings effectively is to replace CMOs battery w a new battery then clear CMOs by motherboard RTCRST jumper