Shift+F10 Not Working During Setup | Generated by AI

Home 2026.07

Question: Shift+F10 isn’t doing anything — how to get a command prompt?

Answer: Click OK on that error dialog first — Setup will roll back and drop you to the “Select location to install Windows” screen again. Shift+F10 only works when focus is on an actual Setup screen, not while that modal error box is up.

Once you’re back at the partition screen:

  1. Press Shift + F10 again — should open cmd.
  2. If it still doesn’t respond, make sure you’re pressing both keys on the laptop’s physical keyboard (not through a remote/KVM/virtual keyboard if you’re using one — Shift+F10 sometimes doesn’t pass through those).
  3. If truly nothing happens, try Shift + Fn + F10 — on Lenovo laptops F-keys often default to media/function mode, so you may need Fn to get the actual F10 signal through.

Once cmd opens, run:

notepad X:\Windows\Panther\setupact.log

(drive letter might be X: or another letter — if X: doesn’t work, run wpeutil or just check dir C:\, dir D:\ etc. to find the Windows PE / setup drive)

Scroll to the very bottom, find the last Error line, and paste it here.

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