Out of the blue it won't boot normally and this is the only screen (hitting F2) I can get it to. Am terrified to go further. It's a 7'ish yrold Optiplex 7010 with some extra RAM and an SSD of some chinese branding.

What are my options?

 

Under "Boot Sequence," does it recognize your SSD?

What does the screen display if you don't hit F2?

Is there important data on that SSD which you need to salvage, or is this just about getting a working computer back?

 

Prior to hitting F2, the screen asks me if I want to continue a normal boot hit F1... where it then tries to do something but the screen goes blank and never boots.

In system configuration, it looks like it recognizes the hard drive.

Nothing too important on the HD, but would be nice to have back.

 

Well, easiest way to dry and recover the data from the drive (assuming you don't have another machine to stick it into) is to create a Linux Live disc and boot from it: https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/create-...tick-on-ubuntu

If the drive is readable, it'll automatically be mounted within Ubuntu and you'll be able to copy the data off of it.