When you first turn on your computer, your computer loads up software stored on a memory chip inside your computer known as BIOS (basic input/output system).
This software is responsible for detecting and testing your hardware, and houses a lot of low-level settings, such as boot order, fan speeds, and auto-power functions.
Entering into your computer’s BIOS menu allows you to tinker with these settings, and can be useful for troubleshooting computer issues.
The quickest way to access your BIOS is by pressing the BIOS menu key (such as F2) right after you turn on your computer. But many modern computers boot so quickly, you might miss your window of opportunity. Thankfully, you can tell your computer to reboot to a special menu that allows you to enter BIOS from within Windows 11.
There are a few ways to do this, so we’ll take a look at each way you can do it.
Enter BIOS by Restarting While Holding Shift
By far, the easiest way to enter BIOS from Windows 11 is by simply holding down the shift button while you restart the computer.
First, go to the Start menu and find the Power button. Hold down the shift button, click the Power button, then click ‘Restart‘.
You can also easily do this from the login screen, so you don’t even have to log in. Just click the hold down shift key, click the Power button, and click on ‘Restart‘.
Once your computer restarts, it will boot into the Windows Recovery Environment. From here, click Troubleshoot -> Advanced options -> UEFI Firmware Settings.
After hitting the ‘Restart‘ button on the next page, your computer will boot into the BIOS menu.
Enter BIOS From the Settings App
If you’re having trouble with the shift-restart method, or you’d rather use the graphical interface to boot into BIOS, then you can do it right from the Settings app.
First, go into settings by right-clicking the Start menu and going to ‘Settings‘. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut Windows key + I.
Once you’re in Settings, scroll down to find the ‘Recovery‘ menu and click on it.
You’ll see an option called ‘Advanced Startup‘ with a ‘Restart now‘ button to the right. Click ‘Restart now‘, and then click ‘Restart now‘ on the following dialogue box that pops up.
Once you restart, click Troubleshoot -> Advanced options -> UEFI Firmware Settings -> Restart to reboot into BIOS.
Enter BIOS With a Command
If you’d rather use a command to restart your computer into BIOS, you’ve got a few options.
The first option is to open the ‘Run‘ command by pressing Windows + R. Once opened, type the following command and press OK:
shutdown /r /o /f /t 00
You can also run this command from Command Prompt, PowerShell, or Windows Terminal. After running the command environment, type in the above command and press Enter.
Once your computer restarts, click Troubleshoot -> Advanced options -> UEFI Firmware Settings -> Restart to reboot into the BIOS menu.
Enter BIOS With a Shortcut
Another quick and simple method, you can create a shortcut on your desktop to restart into BIOS if you need to boot to BIOS frequently.
Simply right-click an empty space on the desktop, then go to New -> Shortcut.
On the ‘Create Shortcut’ wizard, type in the aforementioned command, shutdown /r /o /f /t 00 and name your shortcut.
Now you can simply double-click the shortcut to shut your computer down. Once you boot it again, it will boot into the Windows Recovery Environment, where you’ll click Troubleshoot -> Advanced options -> UEFI Firmware Settings to get into the BIOS menu.
