Stuck on "press F2 or Del" splash screen - bad UEFI boot params?

definecindyconst · September 24, 2022

The problem:

On startup, my computer gets to the UEFI splash screen prompting "please press F2 or Del to access UEFI bios settings". But then it hangs there. Pressing F2 or Del does not work. However, pressing Ctrl+alt+del does cause the computer to restart (so the keyboard is connected and the firmware is receiving key presses).

Likely cause:

While trying to reconfigure rEFInd (a boot loader), I used bcdedit (in Windows 10) to configure the moot manager path. I set the path to a bad value due to a misconception. After rebooting, the computer is now in this "stuck" state. The command I ran was:

bcdedit /set "{bootmgr}" path "/EFI/refind/shimx64.efi /EFI/refind/refind_x64.efi"

I have some guesses as to why the above value for path is bad, but I don't think that actually matters too much.

Things I've tried:

Resetting the CMOS. I was able to do this (LEDs I usually have disabled are back on now, their default BIOS settings), but this did not fix or improve the issue.
Holding F2 or Del while booting
Spamming F2 or Del while booting
Unplugging all USB peripherals
Trying multiple USB ports for my keyboard
Plugging in bootable USB media
Creating a FAT32 USB drive with just a bios CAP file named using the ASUS utility in an attempt to use CrashFree 3 to auto flash another bios version. With this plugged in, the computer still just hangs on the press F2 screen.

My best understanding of the issue is that the bad bootmgr parameter is somewhere in the EFI partition on my SSD, and is causing the firmware to hang when loaded/accessed. This prevents booting, but also seems to prevent access to firmware settings. Perhaps because boot options are loaded and enumerated as part of the settings menu?

As such, if I can just boot into something, I should be able to mount the SSD and fix the EFI partition. Or perhaps just run bcdedit or efibootmgr to overwrite the bad path value.

If anyone has any tips or tricks for:

Further troubleshooting
Ways to get the system to boot into any OS
Ways to forcibly get into the firmware settings
Ways to flash a BIOS version

That would be great! Also, if anyone who's super knowledgeable about EFI could explain why this might be failing the way it is, I'd love to learn that as well. If I can't fix this issue, I'd at least like to learn something (other than don't do this in the future).

System Configuration:

ASUS ROG strix x570-i gaming
Ryzen 5900x
GeForce 3080 founders edition
Kingston hyperx fury rgb 32GB (2x16)

RONOTHAN## · September 24, 2022

9 minutes ago, definecindyconst said:

ASUS ROG strix x570-i gaming

If you're using an SFF system, I'd assume you're probably using a GPU riser as well. If you are using a GPU riser, it could be that it's a gen 3 riser but everything is set to Gen 4, in which case you need to set the BIOS to be Gen 4.

Not sure what else it could be, but figured it's a strong possibility

definecindyconst · September 24, 2022

12 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

If you're using an SFF system, I'd assume you're probably using a GPU riser as well. If you are using a GPU riser, it could be that it's a gen 3 riser but everything is set to Gen 4, in which case you need to set the BIOS to be Gen 4.

Not sure what else it could be, but figured it's a strong possibility

I am indeed using a riser, but the system was running as configured (hardware-wise) earlier today. And has been for months now. So before the CMOS clear the BIOS settings for the riser should've been correct.

While I can't inspect the settings currently to validate that after the CMOS clear they still work, I have CMOS cleared this system in the past without problems. I have not updated the firmware version since I last did a CMOS clear that worked fine, so I would've expected that to behave.

FWIW there is output to the display (the splash screen) and the VGA indicator on the motherboard does no stay on after POST, indicating a display output was found by the firmware and is in use.