Help, i enabled UEFI in my CMOS and now it won't boot!

[jars]

Greetings,

Out of sheer curiosity i was scanning my CMOS settings to see if somehow i could make my PC detect when a headphone is plugged into the front jack. I came across a boot option that wasn't there before, an option to boot through UEFI for Windows 8 users. Since i had upgraded to Windows 8.1, and had also flashed my BIOS with Windows 8 compatibility a few months ago care of ECS (which is why i think there was a new option to boot through UEFI), i decided to enable it. What could go wrong? i thought, surely i could just revert back right? Wrong!

Now it won't boot! Just a blank screen. Until i tried removing the CMOS battery and putting it back. That at least brought back the original startup with option to enter CMOS settings again, which was set back to BIOS mode instead of UEFI (For Windows 7 and below). I thought i just escaped a disaster, but to my dismay i found that Windows would only reach the splash screen before a light blue screen would flash with a message that an error occured and then reboot. After rebooting the windows splash screen would return with the words, "Starting Automatic Repair", upon which a few minutes later the screen would just go black with a moveable mouse pointer and remain this way. If i tried to reboot it would repeat the cycle of the blue screen-reboot-automatic repair-and then mouse pointer.

I tried booting through the Windows 7 CD to try and reinstall Windows (my windows 8 is just an upgrade), it would start copying the initial files etc. But eventually would also end up in a black screen with a mouse pointer. I'm at a loss, did the UEFI setting do permanent damage to my PC?

Is there any way to revert back?

My mobo is an ECS H61H2-M2 v1.0 with 8GB DDR3 RAM

Cpu intel i5 2300 2.8ghz

And my sata hard drive has two partitions. C: is about 100gb for OS and programs while D: is for data.

Thanks,

Ryan

[ManIkWeet]

You'll have to change the mode your disks are in inside your BIOS, either AHCI, IDE or RAID

[jars]

Wouldn't loading optimized defaults set them to the proper mode already?

It's just a regular Sata hard drive.

[jars]

Does anyone have any theories as to what exactly it did to my hard drive if anything at all?

The exact behavior upon switching to UEFI boot mode was that it rebooted and just crashed with power and no display. It didn't even reach the videocard info screen which is usually the first thing that appears upon turning on the PC.

[ManIkWeet]

there are no 'improper' modes, you probably want AHCI though

[jars]

I see. The weirdest thing just happened. I was able to fix it by shorting the Reset Cmos jumper, as soon as i turned the PC on i had to reset cmos settings to default and then Windows 8 loaded all the way to my Start screen! Thank God my hard disk was untampered with!

Here's the weird thing, i had to shutdown the pc prematurely by turning off my AVR then I called it a night. The very next day the pc wouldn't boot again, it was exactly like it was before i reset the cmos.

Only this time, resetting the cmos jumper has no effect on it. Is this an evolving problem?

[Wiflare]

I see. The weirdest thing just happened. I was able to fix it by shorting the Reset Cmos jumper, as soon as i turned the PC on i had to reset cmos settings to default and then Windows 8 loaded all the way to my Start screen! Thank God my hard disk was untampered with!

Here's the weird thing, i had to shutdown the pc prematurely by turning off my AVR then I called it a night. The very next day the pc wouldn't boot again, it was exactly like it was before i reset the cmos.

Only this time, resetting the cmos jumper has no effect on it. Is this an evolving problem?

Try turning it off, removing the graphics card, using a motherboard output, and turning it on.

if nothing changes, try removing all but one stick of ram, and test each individually.

 

if nothing changes, this is likely a motherboard problem, you may want to RMA it in that case.