Last Updated on December 24, 2022 by Mathew Diekhake
Windows 10 comes with its own Advanced Startup Options (ASO), a menu where you can recover, repair, and troubleshoot the Windows operating system. You may also hear Advanced Startup Options be referred to as the Boot Options menu.
ASO isn’t always perfect—there have been times when we have needed to recover our computers, only to find that Advanced Startup Options didn’t actually give us anywhere to turn to like it was supposed to. Whether that was because of malware taking away the options that would have lead to a successful recovery or Windows letting itself down wasn’t explained by the manufacturer, who eventually sent out some recovery disks that allowed us to reinstall windows from scratch (a process that took several hours and a lot of work to complete.
If Advanced Recovery isn’t able to help you recover your device, the recovery disks sent out by the manufacturer aren’t always able to help you back up your data either, so you may wish to plan ahead and backup your computer incrementally, perhaps even with full system image backups like what Macrium Reflect offers.
The Advanced Startup Options menu was first introduced in Windows 8 editions and is still with us today in Windows 10 editions. Advanced Startup Options, or ASO for short, offers a hub of recovery options—everything you need to repair and troubleshoot problems to do with your Windows operating system there and waiting in sizeable well-contrasted button format: no need to remember or enter any commands as you might do from a command line.
Advanced Startup Options in some ways is a sign of conceding that people are going to continue to have to troubleshoot problems relating to Windows in current versions of the operating system. When you had to do that in earlier versions of the OS, you would press some keys before the OS booted up and then scroll through menus that looked very dated and nowhere near as nice as the OS itself that Microsoft had started creating.
Now with the ASO, you get a pretty interface with modern day buttons to navigate your way through the troubleshooting and repair procedures instead. The difference? Most people should suffer from fewer anxiety attacks, and the realities of troubleshooting are not as intimidating this way, it just looks like you are using a different part of the operating system, all decked out in an engaging, unpresumptuous metroesque style.
ASO in Windows 8 and 10 is a lot different to the previously named System Recovery Options that were apparent in Windows 7 and older versions before it. You might still find some websites calling the new ASO menu the System Recovery Options (or SRO), but that name is well and truly now officially redundant. The newer ASO has more options from its main menu for you to choose and there’s also no way that you won’t get it booted up if your computer is suffering from some problems, plus you also don’t even need to remember how to get access to it—the ASO always appears without you having to do anything if your Windows 8 or 10 operating system cannot boot up correctly.
The Buttons
The Advanced Startup Options menu is equipped with lots of different stuff that you might be interested in learning more about, such as the following:
The first thing you’ll see when the Advanced Startup Options comes up is the Choose an Option headline that gives four buttons beneath it (three if you are using earlier versions of Windows before the Windows 10 updates were are up to now): Continue, Turn Off Your PC, Troubleshoot, Use A Device. The first two listed are pretty self-explanatory. It’s the last two that you’ll want to know more about. The Use A Device button is there for when you want to use a Windows recovery DVD, network connection or USB drive. As for the Troubleshooting, it is explained in more detail below.
Troubleshoot
The troubleshoot button is your gateway to getting problems solved and hosts a vast array of features, all of which are easy to find and presented to you in more buttons. The first buttons you’ll see are “Refresh Your PC” and “Reset Your PC.”
- Refresh Your PC: Refreshing the Windows 10 operating system will wipe any of the applications that you’ve installed on top of it and then refresh the software, likely resulting in any bugs it might have had now gone. The downside is you’ll need to get to work installing the applications that you have now lost and fixed up all your bookmarks if you didn’t save them, too, but it’s a great way to fix any problems instead of spending hours trying to solve them—just refresh the OS and you’re done. All your files that you have downloaded remain on the computer, so everything you might have stored away in File Explorer, for instance, will still be there when you start using it again.
- Reset Your PC: Resetting the Windows 10 operating system will result in your applications gone and everything you might have put on the computer gone as well. It is the equivalent of a complete factory reset you might have done before on your smartphone—like something that runs Android or iOS operating system versions—and should only be done after you have tried fixing a problem with the refresh first. There’s no point going through the trouble of backing everything up if the refresh would have fixed your problem. The only thing left to do after using “Reset Your PC” is to completely reinstall the operating system, which will always fix any issues that were too stubborn to go away previously.
Advanced Options
After your refresh and reset buttons is another called the “Advanced Options” on it and this is what the Advanced Startup Options menu is named after. If you don’t want to do the refresh or reset, then you’ll want to click through to here to find the rest of your more detailed options.
- System Restore: System Restore is similar to a factory reset, but instead of starting the operating system from scratch you just rewind the clock to a time that you know the computer was working well. You don’t always get to pick the exact day you want because you can only use the restore points that Windows has saved for you (see How to Change Number of Times Windows 10 Creates Restore Points for more on that), but it’s still the better option over resetting—and refreshing for that matter—if you can restore it to a recent time when you still had most of your files and apps installed so you aren’t losing much data. If you’ve just come up with an issue recently, then do this straight away so you can restore it using one of the restore points from only a few days ago. With a bit of luck you won’t notice any difference when the computer starts working again. There are some things to consider though like the fact that not all computers running Windows 10 seem to have it turned on by default so you won’t be able to use it if yours is one of them.
- System Image Recovery: System Image Recovery allows you to restore the Windows 10 operating system by using a system image file. Not a great option for the lesser tech-savvy, System Image Recovery is seldom used by non-professionals because it overwrites your computer’s state and files and thus you might as well just reset your PC most of the time instead of trying to work out what a system image is.
- Automatic Repair: Windows 10’s Automatic Repairs will try to solve problems for you that might be preventing your computer from being able to boot correctly. It is the ideal choice for machines that won’t boot into the operating system like they usually would. If the Automatic Repair can’t solve your problem, then start looking into more time-consuming options next.
- Command Prompt: Intended for the professionals on, the Command Prompt is available just like it would be from within the operating system for you to run a vast array of commands to solve problems with from inside the Recovery Environment Command Prompt. You shouldn’t play around with the command line unless you know what you’re doing. If you’re confident in your abilities but don’t know the command, there are plenty of good resources online for letting you know what the commands are.
- Startup Settings: Enter the Startup Settings if you want to adjust anything to do with the way your Windows 10 operating system starts up. It is here where you’ll find the well known Safe Mode that is used to boot up Windows 10 and run a virus scan with antivirus software if your computer doesn’t run correctly when booted the usual way because of a virus. That’s all technicians do when you hand over your computer, come back a few hours later and give them a few hundred bucks to make your computer work again.
The following tutorial demonstrates how to boot to the Advanced Startup Options menu when you’re using a version of the Windows 10 operating system.
Method One: How to Boot to Advanced Startup Options from Settings
Here is how you can boot to the Advanced Startup Options menu from the Settings application in Windows 10:
1. Open the Settings app and click on Update & security from the main Windows Settings menu.
2. From Update & Security’s menu, click Recovery, and then in the right side of the same window click on Restart now under the Advanced startup heading. (click to enlarge screenshot below)
Method Two: How to Boot to Advanced Startup Options from Power Menu
Here is how you can boot to the Advanced Startup Options menu from the Power menu in Windows 10:
1. Open the Start menu by pressing the Windows key, or click on the Windows logo on the taskbar.
2. Click on Power from the Start menu and press and hold the Shift key, and then click Restart. (click to enlarge screenshot below)
Method Three: How to Boot to Advanced Startup Options from Choose an Operating System Screen
Here is how you can boot to the Advanced Startup Options menu from the Choose an operating system screen when you’re dual booting with another operating system in Windows 10:
Note: You can only boot to Advanced Startup Options from the Choose an operating system menu if you’re dual booting operating systems.
1. When you boot up a compute with Dual operating systems, you get a Choose an operating system screen. From that screen at boot, click the Change defaults or choose other options at the bottom of the page.
2. From the Options screen, click Choose other options.
3. You’ll now have the Advanced Startup Options on your computer’s display.
Method Four: How to Boot to Advanced Startup Options from Recovery Drive
Here is how you can boot to the Advanced Startup Options menu from a recovery drive:
Note: If you boot to Advanced Startup Options from a recovery drive, you don’t get the Reset This PC option from the Troubleshoot menu or the Startup Settings option from the Advanced Options menu.
1. Boot Windows from the recovery drive.
2. Choose the keyboard language from the keyboard layout screen.
3. You’ll now have the Advanced Startup Options on your computer’s display.
Method Five: How to Boot to Advanced Startup Options from Windows 10 Installation USB or DVD
Here is how you can boot to the Advanced Startup Options menu from a Windows 10 installation USB or CD/DVD:
Note: If you boot to Advanced Startup Options from a recovery drive, you don’t get the Reset This PC option from the Troubleshoot menu or the Startup Settings option from the Advanced Options menu.
1. Boot Windows from the installation media.
2. Choose your language, keyboard and time preferences.
3. Click on the Repair your computer link at the bottom of the page.
4. You’ll now have the Advanced Startup Options on your computer’s display.
Method Six: How to Boot to Advanced Startup Options from a Hard Reboot
Here is how you can boot to the Advanced Startup Options menu from a hard reset in Windows 10:
Note: Use this option if you’re unable to boot into Windows.
1. Press and hold the Power button on the computer until it turns off.
2. Press the Power button to turn the computer on.
3. Repeat the process at least three times or until you see the Windows logo screen or the Please wait message on the computer’s display.
4. When the Recovery menu comes up on screen, click See advanced repair options.
5. You’ll now have the Advanced Startup Options on your computer’s display.
Method Seven: How to Boot to Advanced Startup Options from Command Prompt/Run Dialog
Here is how you can boot to the Advanced Startup Options menu from the Command Prompt or the Run dialog box in Windows 10:
1. Open the Command Prompt or Run dialog (Windows logo + R keys).
2. Type the following command below into the command line and then press the Enter key on your keyboard to execute it:
shutdown /r /o /f /t 00
3. You’ll now have the Advanced Startup Options on your computer’s display.
You can now close the Command Prompt window.
That’s all.