Cannot boot from USB after A12 Bios update / installation of Windows 8

I seem to have got myself in a right pickle. I did the two BIOS updates prior to installing WIndows 8 using a USB stick. The install went OK. In fact I installed again using the USB stick as I realised that some of the drivers that I downloaded for windows 8 on the Dell support site don't actually work/install, so started again from scratch (I like a clean install) and only installed the drivers for the missing items that werent discovered on the install or installed with windows update.

Before I continued I wanted to make a ghost image of my fresh system using my bootable USB, but low and behold it was not detected (From F12 boot menu). This was odd, so I tried one of my many Linux USB sticks. This too was not detected. Usually I plug into the eSATA port as it seems to be better at picking up my slower sticks, so tried both the USB 3.0 ports. This time it was detected, however it stated that there was no operating system (when there is).

So the final test was to stick my original Windows 8 USB media stick back in (the one I had already done two sucessful installs with), and again this detected, but says no operating system found. So I am pulling my hair out. I am wondering if I should try a custom BIOS? Doing a search I see a lot of people that have had trouble with A12 booting from USB, however I did manage to get it to work twice, so I am at a loss why its not working now...

Once booted up into Windows 8 all the USB drives are detected and work fine...

Any ideas?

 

As a test today I plugged in a USB DVD drive which is not detected by either the BIOS or windows 8 with makes me think that the USB board itself is shot. Seems like there is not enough voltage as the drives semi-spins up and whirs a bit ....

This all happened around the same time that my Transcend USB 3.0 64 GB flash drive stopped working (I had been installing the drivers from it previously). Could a USB flash drive really have borked by laptop?

 

There is an option in the modded BIOSes to disable BIOS-level USB detection, so it might be worthwhile to flash a modded BIOS to check it out - but I'm just pointing out a known feature, and it wouldn't help your problem by itself.

I think you should revert all settings to default and try again and flash the modded BIOS anyway.

 

I flashed the new BIOS but it didn't make any difference. Oddly when I disabled "fast startup" in Windows 8 they suddenly started working again, but I don't know how that could be related..

The only issue I have now is that some of my USB flash drives are too slow to be detected in BIOS. If I ctrl-alt-dell they get picked up on the second cycle... if I could get a delay in there somehow things would be perfect...