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Start Windows 10 in Advanced Boot Options

Three reliable ways into the Windows Advanced Startup menu — Shift+Restart, the Settings recovery path, and the shutdown command — plus which recovery tool to pick once you're there.

· Dev3lop Team

When a Windows machine stops cooperating — a stuck update, a driver that blue-screens on login, a reset that won’t complete — the fix usually starts in one place: the Advanced Startup menu (what most of us still call Advanced Boot Options). It’s the blue full-screen menu that gets you to Safe Mode, System Restore, startup repair, and command-line recovery without needing Windows to be healthy first.

Here are three dependable ways in, and what to choose once you arrive. Everything below works on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Method 1: Shift + Restart (fastest)

If you can reach the login screen or the desktop, this is the two-second route:

  1. Left click the Start button (or stay on the login screen).
  2. Hold Shift — and keep holding it until the machine restarts.
  3. While holding Shift, left click the Power button.
  4. Still holding Shift, left click Restart.

Instead of booting straight back into Windows, the machine restarts into a blue Choose an option screen. That’s Advanced Startup.

Method 2: Through Settings

If you’d rather click than hold keys:

  1. Open Settings → Update & Security → Recovery (on Windows 11: Settings → System → Recovery).
  2. Under Advanced startup, click Restart now.

Same destination, slightly longer walk. This route is handy when you’re talking someone through it over the phone — there’s no “keep holding Shift” step to get wrong.

Method 3: From the command line

For the keyboard-driven crowd, or when you’re already in a terminal:

shutdown /r /o /t 0

/r restarts, /o requests the advanced options menu, /t 0 does it immediately. This is also the easiest method to script when you manage more than one machine.

What to pick once you’re in

From Choose an option, the path to the useful tools is Troubleshoot → Advanced options. The ones that solve most real problems:

  • Startup Settings → Restart — after the reboot you get the numbered list; press 5 (or F5) for Safe Mode with Networking if you need internet access for drivers or downloads, or 4 for plain Safe Mode. Safe Mode loads a minimal driver set, which is exactly what you want when a bad driver or service is crashing normal boot.
  • System Restore — rolls Windows (not your files) back to a restore point from before things broke.
  • Startup Repair — the automated fix for boot-loop situations; worth one attempt before manual surgery.
  • Command Prompt — full recovery console for disk checks (chkdsk), boot record repairs, and moving files off a sick drive.

One tip from years of fixing analyst workstations: if the machine hosts anything your team depends on — a local database, scheduled jobs, a Tableau extract refresh — note what’s running before you start rebooting into recovery menus. Safe Mode won’t start those services, and it’s easy to burn an hour chasing a “broken pipeline” that’s really just a machine sitting in Safe Mode.

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