Cannot Access Bios with drives in; but can boot to windows

[Praxis]

Hi All, 

 

I wanted to get back into some overclocking on my old rig but have found I cannot access the bios with any drive plugged in. But I can still boot to windows.

 

I've taken all the drives out and have also removed my graphics card and can now boot to the bios.

 

I've tried resetting the bios to defaults and clearing the CMOS but still can't get the bios to load when a drive is plugged in.

 

The motherboard post code / q code I'm getting is AE, which is a legacy boot event error.

 

My system is the following:

4790k

Asus z97 pro (wifi/AC)

with a range of drives:

2 Samsung nvme SSD's one in the motherboards m.2 port the other in an Asus hyper mini pcie to m.2 adaptor,

1 Samsung SATA SSD and 1 HDD.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

 

[AdamBGames]

17 hours ago, Praxis said:

Hi All, 

 

I wanted to get back into some overclocking on my old rig but have found I cannot access the bios with any drive plugged in. But I can still boot to windows.

 

I've taken all the drives out and have also removed my graphics card and can now boot to the bios.

 

I've tried resetting the bios to defaults and clearing the CMOS but still can't get the bios to load when a drive is plugged in.

 

The motherboard post code / q code I'm getting is AE, which is a legacy boot event error.

 

My system is the following:

4790k

Asus z97 pro (wifi/AC)

with a range of drives:

2 Samsung nvme SSD's one in the motherboards m.2 port the other in an Asus hyper mini pcie to m.2 adaptor,

1 Samsung SATA SSD and 1 HDD.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

 

On my Asus board, there is an option in the bios to change the amount of wait time to check for key pressing. It might be in a different location on your board since mine is a B550 board. But it should be somewhere in there.

[Praxis]

13 hours ago, AdamBGames said:

On my Asus board, there is an option in the bios to change the amount of wait time to check for key pressing. It might be in a different location on your board since mine is a B550 board. But it should be somewhere in there.

Hey, thanks for the reply, I'll give that a go and see if it works.

 

However I have a feeling it may be something more than that, I see the Asus logo pop up and the text about hitting F1 and del to access the Bios. But as soon as I hit del the screen goes blank, it's like it's entering the bios but there's some kind of display error.

[AdamBGames]

On 7/11/2020 at 2:41 PM, Praxis said:

Hey, thanks for the reply, I'll give that a go and see if it works.

 

However I have a feeling it may be something more than that, I see the Asus logo pop up and the text about hitting F1 and del to access the Bios. But as soon as I hit del the screen goes blank, it's like it's entering the bios but there's some kind of display error.

Take out the drives and the graphics card, I believe the 4790k has integrated graphics, you might be able to use that to find the issue

[Praxis]

4 hours ago, AdamBGames said:

Take out the drives and the graphics card, I believe the 4790k has integrated graphics, you might be able to use that to find the issue

Thanks, yeah I'm thankful for having the integrated GPU, tbh I think it'll influence my future purchases to make sure all my CPUs have one.

 

I just tried extending the post time to 10secs, unfortunately I hit the same issue of when a drive is installed and I hit del on the post screen the display just goes blank.

 

 

[AdamBGames]

9 hours ago, Praxis said:

Thanks, yeah I'm thankful for having the integrated GPU, tbh I think it'll influence my future purchases to make sure all my CPUs have one.

 

I just tried extending the post time to 10secs, unfortunately I hit the same issue of when a drive is installed and I hit del on the post screen the display just goes blank.

 

 

Hmm, have you tried using other keys to get into the bios, like F2? it could also be your keyboard, I had an issue with my K70 where when I used my I7 6700k and Z270 board, the keyboard didnt initialise until AFTER the start to boot into windows, may trying a cheap different keyboard might help.

[Praxis]

On 7/14/2020 at 12:05 AM, AdamBGames said:

Hmm, have you tried using other keys to get into the bios, like F2? it could also be your keyboard, I had an issue with my K70 where when I used my I7 6700k and Z270 board, the keyboard didnt initialise until AFTER the start to boot into windows, may trying a cheap different keyboard might help.

Yeah I've tried hitting F2 as well. When the drives are in I can spam F8 and it brings up the boot drive selection screen which looks/is some small part of the bios. From that screen I can select a drive to boot from or it gives me the option to enter setup ( which I assume is the full bios) when I try this I go straight to a black screen like when spamming F2 and/or delete.

 

 

I think at this point I just have to live with it as it is and forget overclocking. Hopefully I don't need to go into the bios often otherwise I'll have take the side off and unplug all the drives. Perhaps it's my PC telling me I need an upgrade

 

Thanks for the advice!!

[sseehra141]

One thing you could do is try booting directly into the bios using the advanced startup option in Windows 10. To do this, click on settings-->update & security --> recovery -->advanced startup-->troubleshoot-->advanced options--> uefi firmware settings and then click restart and you should boot into the bios without having to frantically press on any function keys. This does seem tedious, but maybe this could be a workaround for your issue. 

[Praxis]

On 7/15/2020 at 4:50 PM, sseehra141 said:

One thing you could do is try booting directly into the bios using the advanced startup option in Windows 10. To do this, click on settings-->update & security --> recovery -->advanced startup-->troubleshoot-->advanced options--> uefi firmware settings and then click restart and you should boot into the bios without having to frantically press on any function keys. This does seem tedious, but maybe this could be a workaround for your issue. 

Hi,

 

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately I don't have the option for uefi firmware settings. After advanced options my only choice is start up settings. I'll have a search to see why it's not available. Perhaps this will lead me to a solution.

Thanks

[sseehra141]

16 hours ago, Praxis said:

Hi,

 

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately I don't have the option for uefi firmware settings. After advanced options my only choice is start up settings. I'll have a search to see why it's not available. Perhaps this will lead me to a solution.

Thanks

There may be a few reasons why you cannot see the option. First, is your current BIOS mode UEFI or legacy, since if you are in legacy mode, you will not see the UEFI option. Another thing you could try is disabling fast startup since sometimes that can affect being able to get into the UEFI firmware settings. Third, you could also try making a Boot to UEFI shortcut on your desktop, which may allow you to get into the UEFI firmware settings. Finally, if all else fails, you could try clearing your CMOS. This is what I would do, but I am no expert on this, so if anyone else has a better suggestion, please feel free to chime in.