So F12 brings up a new menu, this despite that Dell support for my pc (which has expired) clearly states in the support manual F12 will bring up one start up in the upper right. Below is what I get.
UEFI Options:
Windows Boot Manager
Onboard NIC (IPV4)
Onboard NIC (IPV6)
Other Options:
Bios Setup
Diagnostics
BIOS Flash Update
Device Configuration
Peripheral Device Settings (OPROM) <-greyed out
Change Boot Mode Setting
Support Assistant OS Recovery
I checked Change Boot Mode Setting and there is nothing there important.
I have one option, do the rescue media over, this time using a flash drive. I already have a flash drive rescue created the day I got the pc, so it should be able to do that, but maybe not. To use that, you must click recover which will automatically reinstall windows rather than boot into it via F12. I found one article stating that Dell does not support booting into DVDs, but I don't know if that is correct or not.
I found one other Dell support ticket via google that asked my exact same question. The dell support agent simply referenced a doc which had nothing to do with booting from a DVD or Flash. There were no other entries on that so the OP probably figured he wouldn't get a correct answer and left.
I can't believe my misfortune in this. In settings / recover on my pc, it clearly states click here to boot into a DVD or Flash drive but all I get is the NIC (4 or6) options. I'm beyond frustration so I'm going to forget about this for a time.
Still many thanks to all who offered help in ther waning hours of this forum. Everyone here is a great bunch of guys. abacab you have helped me on other issues before too. many, many thanks!