no display signal Haaaalp! Asus Z87 No Display Output, CMOS Cleared - MOBO Boot Looping

[Ron-Burgundy-198]

Ladies and gentlemen today is a sad day  (Build spec at the bottom)

A month or so ago I powered on my machine, the screen, no signal (connected by Displayport as it has been for several years). however by ear the machine seems to go through the same cycle.

I tried loads of different stuff to diagnose the cause, tried the GPU in a different PCIE 16x sot, tried using HDMI instead of Display port, tried swapping out cables that are 'known good' and different displays that are 'known good'. still no signal.

 

I checked all connectors in the system were secure.

With the GPU in the first 16x slot the LEDs are flashing red, green, green on the GPU (I think, I'm color blind), I tried it in the second PCIE 16x slot and all of it's LEDs are blue on the GPU. either way the VGA led on the mobo is on.

I expected the GPU was faulty, so i tried removing the GPU and connecting via the MOBO HDMI  (the only video output on the rear IO, still no signal.

I started an RMA with EVGA but last night I thought it may well not be the cause or the only faulty part. I vaguely remembered changing settings in the BIOS to specify that I'd set it only to output video to the GPU and not onboard graphics.

I've been able to connect to the machine using team viewer and it was fine other than using the microsoft basic display driver. then in an attempt to clear the BIOS setting above I used the clear cmos button on the mobo and now it's stuck in a boot loop where by timing it appears to be going through POST then restarts repeatedly but I have no means of seeing if it's even displaying anything while it POSTs.

 

I've tried using BIOS flashback via USB with the latest version of the BIOS with the correct naming format for this board (Z87DD.CAP filename) but it fails to update every time I try, the flash button flashes then stays lit to show it's failed.

 

I've got the HDDs running on RAID5 running on intel's RST (I think that's the tech). I've been meaning to shift this out to an external NAS for a while now but not had the cash to do it.

Do any of you guys have any advice?
 

 

So here are the specs:

Windows 10 x64

Case	Fractal Design Define R4 ATX Mid Tower Case
PSU	Corsair 860W AX860i 80PLUS Platinum High Performance Digital PSU
Motherboard	Asus Z87-DELUXE/QUAD World's first Thunderbolt™ 2-certified Z87 motherboard with two 20 Gbit/s channels , perfectly-tuned system optimization and 802.11ac Wi-Fi control.
Processor	Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
RAM	Corsair Vengeance 32GB (4 x 8GB) Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz DIMM 240-pin CL10
SSD Hard Drive	Samsung 750GB 840 EVO Series SSD (OS Drive)
Hard Drive	Seagate 3TB Barracuda Hard Drive - 3.5" SATA-III - 7200RPM 64MB Cache
Hard Drive	Seagate 3TB Barracuda Hard Drive - 3.5" SATA-III - 7200RPM 64MB Cache
Hard Drive	Seagate 3TB Barracuda Hard Drive - 3.5" SATA-III - 7200RPM 64MB Cache
Hard Drive	WD Red 3TB NAS Desktop Hard Disk Drive - Intellipower SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch
Monitor	ASUS ROG Swift Curved PG348Q Gaming Monitor - 34" 21:9 Ultra-wide QHD (3440x1440), overclockable 100Hz , G-SYNC™
Graphics Card	EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 GAMING, 11G-P4-6696-KR
Blu-Ray Drive	LG BH16NS40

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Ive had a p5q pro bootloop on me before and i literally just unplugged or turned off the power, wait for the psu to drain, then power the psu back on, turn the board on, then bootloop issue fixed

 

There is a very slight potential to corrupt your bios (experienced it before) but since asus has a socketed bios chip (the thing below the wifi 802 writing and beside the southbridge) its very easy to reprogram it using a 4$ bios programmer, heck i reccomend reprograming it anyways to a maximus vi extreme bios for better overclocking ability. Personally ive modded my p5q with a p5qd bios and def saw and increase in fsb capability, though board is still hot garbage so cant really fix that completely with just a bios mod

[HQuan]

Do you try to reset the BIOS by remove the CMOS battery for 5 minutes and place it back again?

[Ron-Burgundy-198]

37 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Ive had a p5q pro bootloop on me before and i literally just unplugged or turned off the power, wait for the psu to drain, then power the psu back on, turn the board on, then bootloop issue fixed

 

There is a very slight potential to corrupt your bios (experienced it before) but since asus has a socketed bios chip (the thing below the wifi 802 writing and beside the southbridge) its very easy to reprogram it using a 4$ bios programmer, heck i reccomend reprograming it anyways to a maximus vi extreme bios for better overclocking ability. Personally ive modded my p5q with a p5qd bios and def saw and increase in fsb capability, though board is still hot garbage so cant really fix that completely with just a bios mod

I'm going to leave it disconnected from power for an hour or so while I've got other stuff to do and see if that helps, I might well reprogram it if I can get it back up again, my biggest concern for now is getting it back to functional and recovering the raid array.

Thanks for the advice bro!

[Ron-Burgundy-198]

10 minutes ago, HQuan said:

Do you try to reset the BIOS by remove the CMOS battery for 5 minutes and place it back again?

The buton's supposed to do the same thing but apparently not quite in this case. for the sake of trying it I've removed it.

Thanks 

[HQuan]

1 minute ago, Ron-Burgundy-198 said:

The buton's supposed to do the same thing but apparently not quite in this case. for the sake of trying it I've removed it.

Thanks 

Just try it, since no power = no settings stored in BIOS. So the motherboard are forced to use it original settings.

[Ron-Burgundy-198]

Nope, the machine was left of for 2 hours with  the CMOS battery removed. I've just come back to it to boot it up again and it's doing exactly the same thing.

 

Do you guys have any other ideas?

[Bitter]

Try it with the bare minimum components? 1 stick RAM, no GPU, no disks, nothing but monitor, keyboard, mouse connected.

Tried testing the RAM in another machine? Get a very cheap compatible CPU to try in it? Asus x8x series boards have a BIOS flaw where they only actually update the BIOS via the Windows BIOS update tool, using the onboard BIOS tool results in a change in BIOS number displayed but the whole new BIOS is not installed. Not sure if the flashback has the same fault or not. See my thread about that here: So it's possible that the BIOS never updated or never updated fully or is stuck in some limbo state. You may need to purchase a BIOS chip off eBay and swap it to get the system running again.

As for the colorblindness, take a picture with your phone and invert the colors maybe or consult the motherboard manual for the light position instead of it's color?

[Ron-Burgundy-198]

18 hours ago, Bitter said:

Try it with the bare minimum components? 1 stick RAM, no GPU, no disks, nothing but monitor, keyboard, mouse connected.

Tried testing the RAM in another machine? Get a very cheap compatible CPU to try in it? Asus x8x series boards have a BIOS flaw where they only actually update the BIOS via the Windows BIOS update tool, using the onboard BIOS tool results in a change in BIOS number displayed but the whole new BIOS is not installed. Not sure if the flashback has the same fault or not. See my thread about that here: So it's possible that the BIOS never updated or never updated fully or is stuck in some limbo state. You may need to purchase a BIOS chip off eBay and swap it to get the system running again.

As for the colorblindness, take a picture with your phone and invert the colors maybe or consult the motherboard manual for the light position instead of it's color?

 

521679971_AsusZ87DeluxeQuad.pdf

[Ron-Burgundy-198]

So,

I've tried disconnecting everything other than one stick of RAM in the position recommended by the manual, I've cycled  through with each stick of RAM and goes through exactly the same behavior as before.

 

I'm convinced it's not the RAM at this point considering before I pressed the CLR_CMOS button on the board the system would boot through to Windows 10, allowed me to sign in and everything seemed to be working as I'd expect with the one exception being video output from the GPU or the onboard HDMI (with the GPU removed). I could connect via TeamViewer and it would be using the Microsoft Basic Display Driver ( I think that's what its called) and the machine was working without any other issues.

 

I expected using the CLR_CMOS button to do exactly that and take the BIOS to go back to default and default the video output setting I thought I'd set to output only to the GPU via PCIE, (which I expected to default back if a GPU wasn't detected, but wasn't doing that).
 

It seems like I'd have more options to diagnose the issue if I can unfck the BIOS following whatever the CLR_CMOS button did and get access to Windows via Team viewer again.

PS. excuse the cable management.

PPS. I can only use one hand following cancer treatment, and when trying to remove the previous 780Ti I hadn't quite pushed the catch down on the first PCIE 16x slot and snapped the catch off, hence the GPU positioning here, the slot works fine but for the sake of making sure the 1080Ti was secure I put it in the second slot.

[Mattias Edeslatt]

1 hour ago, Ron-Burgundy-198 said:

I expected using the CLR_CMOS button to do exactly that and take the BIOS to go back to default and default the video output setting I thought I'd set to output only to the GPU via PCIE, (which I expected to default back if a GPU wasn't detected, but wasn't doing that).

 

Well, the CLR_CMOS does exactly what you think it is doing. You have followed the instructions? The normal procedure is to unplug the PSU, clear CMOS, plug it in again and boot. 

 

If that doesn't work, there is a problem with the motherboard.

[Ron-Burgundy-198]

5 minutes ago, Mattias Edeslatt said:

 

Well, the CLR_CMOS does exactly what you think it is doing. You have followed the instructions? The normal procedure is to unplug the PSU, clear CMOS, plug it in again and boot. 

 

If that doesn't work, there is a problem with the motherboard.

 

I have indeed, the instructions (attached in a previous post above) are pretty standard.

I have managed to get the BIOS to at least go through the flashing procedure (going by the light pattern described in the manual),  the manual gives the wrong filename it should be 'Z87DD.CAP' although it behaves the same.

I'm tempted to replace the BIOS chip at this point to see if I can get it operational and recover my RAID array and start looking at a compatible MOBO or planning around MOBO/RAM/CPU upgrade.

 

@SomerandomtechyboiI'm assuming this is the BIOS chip?

[Mattias Edeslatt]

35 minutes ago, Ron-Burgundy-198 said:

I'm tempted to replace the BIOS chip at this point to see if I can get it operational and recover my RAID array and start looking at a compatible MOBO or planning around MOBO/RAM/CPU upgrade.

 

Ouch....   do you have HW-raid from the MB?

 

This is exactly the reason HW-raid is a bad, bad idea. You are SAOL when the old hardware take a dive as you just can't plug those drives in a new system and go on, you need to use the exact identical HW to access the RAID-volume. With SW-raid it is just to change the faulty HW, boot up and everything is up and running.  The worst scenario is that you need to reinstall the software and enable the data-set again.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

2 hours ago, Ron-Burgundy-198 said:

I'm tempted to replace the BIOS chip

its removable, you can just use a bios programmer which means if it gets corrupted then you can just reflash instead of getting ripped off and not having tools to reflash the bios in the event of a corruption

 

Search up a tutorial on yt for flashing bios chip with ch341a (cheap 4$ usb programmer), i prefer using asprogrammer over the ch341a software cause i just find it less annoying to set language and i just like the ui better

 

You also get freedom of what you flash on the bios chip so id highly reccomend flashing a maximus vi bios for increased overclocking ability once you actually get the thing working

 

 

[Ron-Burgundy-198]

On 1/23/2022 at 1:48 PM, Mattias Edeslatt said:

Ouch....   do you have HW-raid from the MB?

 

I'm afraid so, it seemed like a good idea, it's only my second build an I put it together in 2014.....so I'm not super surprised there's an issue, I have been intending to migrate it to a NAS but haven't had the money up until recently but my energy has been zapped by a new job so not felt like doing anything......the other thing that I was always unsure about is how to migrate such a substantial amount of data from the same drives to a NAS, if you're familiar with that I'd love to hear what the best way to do that would be.

On 1/23/2022 at 4:03 PM, Somerandomtechyboi said:

its removable, you can just use a bios programmer which means if it gets corrupted then you can just reflash instead of getting ripped off and not having tools to reflash the bios in the event of a corruption

 

So after getting familiar with the stuff involving BIOS flashing, flashing it to the latest version, reinstalling the chip it solved the boot loop issue.

I got a couple of other errors but those were quickly solved I'm back to a situation where the board is giving me the A0 code for 'good to go' but the VGA light is still on and no output from the only HDMI on the board.

 

I've tested my 1080Ti and it runs fine in a friends machine he's lent me (he's got a baby and a 2 year old so he has no time to use it right now lol)

I've only got my SSD connected to my machine and without display I'm pretty sure it's loaded up Windows......however regrettably one of the last things I did before clearing the CMOS was going into system config and setting startup to (I believe) 'diagnostic' in hoping that I might be able to resolve the display issues......not thinking that it wouldn't allow network connectivity which would mean I couldn't connect to it through teamviewer.

 

I know, I know..... I can hear the facepalms from here  
 

Do you guys have any ideas on possible next steps? I just want to try and recover what I can. I'm considering taking the SSD and putting it into this laptop just to try and change the system config setting back, not sure if it would sh!t the bed because of compatibility though.

 

Considering these parts paired with my PSU, CPU cooler, GPU and case:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/zv8kvf

Any thoughts? I've not looked for parts in years!

Thanks for your help!

[Bitter]

Try Ubuntu Linux on a thumb drive if you think it's a Windows setting to confirm.

[Ron-Burgundy-198]

19 hours ago, Bitter said:

Try Ubuntu Linux on a thumb drive if you think it's a Windows setting to confirm.

I don't think the windows setting is causing the display issue, I'm pretty sure it's the board or CPU that's causing that issue hence the part list but even with the display issue I could connect to the machine via teamviewer, the startup setting I changed (system config and setting startup to  'diagnostic') I thought would only apply for one boot and might remove any windows issue causing no display signal, however it's quite clear that it doesn't reset after one boot and has no network support in that mode now .

 

I'm basically trying to get the machine back into Windows with networking so I can 'mitigate the damage' in terms of data loss