[Durham] MINT & BIOS

[A Pearson]

Hello all

My question is can mint lock the BIOS in a dual boot situation?
I set up a new desktop computer some while ago with Windows 7 on one hard drive and Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon on a separate hard drive. Each was installed with only one drive connected at the time of installation.
I would go into the BIOS and select boot priority depending on which OS I wanted to run.

I did this to avoid using a boot loader such as GRUB as I had been caught before and found when I uninstalled Linux due to the boot loader I could no longer run Windows. That was many years ago.  This system has been operating successfully for many months but I now find I cannot access Windows as the normal Del key is not  bringing up the BIOS screen, it just boots to Mint.  I have operated other computers like this in the past but offline.

The only difference is that I ran updates on the MINT whereas I had not done this previously. I cannot confirm if I got into Windows since then or not.  No other changes have been made to MINT system.

Why am I bothering with Windows you ask?   I aim to phase out XP on my existing main desktop as software support diminishes and replace this with Win7 on this later desktop which will become the new main one. This will become the prime one whilst I learn the Linux system and assess my existing software requirements in relation to stored data.
This latter one is currently the dual boot. If there is no way round this I may have to accept the boot loader or keep it just for Windows and run Linux on the recently received laptop. I am about to try to access the Windows disk to see if I can get in with the Linux disc disconnected but not hopeful
Has anyone got any ideas please on this one or come across it before?  All I can assume its maybe to do with the Mint updates when both drives were in circuit.  If there is no other way round this  if I update to Mint 18 will this install the GRUB boot loader as I wish the Windows disc to remain in an operable state?

Thanks & Regards
Alan Pearson
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