F12 boot menu not available

Running the latest distro of Proxmox 2.2
qemu/kvm VM
By the time my console session gives me keyboard control the F12 boot menu has timed out.
Keyboard freezes every time I "send key" <ctrl-alt-del> and a "reset" click repeats the above problem.
Is there a work-around method?

VM settings -
cores=1
cpu=qemu32
ide2=cdrom,media=cdrom
memory=64
net0=ne2k_pci,rate=100
nodename=proxmox
ostype=other
sata0=local:120/vm-120-disk-2.raw,size=8G
sockets=1
vga=cirrus