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Can't get into the BIOS!

DezGalbie
By DezGalbie
in Troubleshooting
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Hi guys,

I'm having some weird issues with my PC at home that maybe someone can help with?

Basically, I can't get into the BIOS anymore. When I power the PC on the screen is just black until I reach the windows sign in page. It still boots fine - I can get into windows which still seems to work fine like it always did. My games, web browsing, and media playback all works perfectly. I just don't get the BIOS splash screen with the option to enter UEFI/BIOS like I used to. If I press the delete key on this pre-windows black screen the system seems to freeze and prevents the PC from getting to the windows sign in screen. I suspect that by pressing delete at this point I'm actually entering the BIOS since the system stops here, but I get no indication of this on screen. At one point I was only getting the splash screen if I completely powered off and unplugged the PC before starting it up again. But now even that won't bring the BIOS screen back.

I've looked in various online places to try and find a fix but nothing has helped so far. Among the things I've tried are - checking that the PC is not set to "fast boot" in the BIOS (I was able to check this when I was still getting into the BIOS with a complete power down and unplugging before restarting), updating the BIOS (again I was able to do this when I could still get the BIOS with a power down and unplugging before restarting), disabling "fast start" in windows 10, detaching my boot SSD and HDD before powering on the PC (when I do this I just get a black screen), clearing the CMOS, and removing the motherboard battery.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

In case it matters my system is Ryzen 5 1500X, MSI B350M Mortar Arctic motherboard (running on the latest BIOS), 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 6GB graphics card, running Windows 10 Pro.

Any help greatly appreciated.

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I should mention - I also tried that method entering UEFI settings where you hold shift key when clicking restart then on the blue screen choosing "troubleshooting", then "change UEFI settings". That doesn't work either :/

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Maybe CMOS? Ive seen some weird things happen with a failing CMOS

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3 minutes ago, Tinytank said:

Maybe CMOS? Ive seen some weird things happen with a failing CMOS

Do you mean like the motherboard battery? Or like the chip on the motherboard is failing?

I did try removing the CMOS battery to clear any settings etc but do you think maybe the battery is dead and I need a new one?

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Just now, DezGalbie said:

Do you mean like the motherboard battery? Or like the chip on the motherboard is failing?

I did try removing the CMOS battery to clear any settings etc but do you think maybe the battery is dead and I need a new one?

its probably not dead, can you boot into safemode?

 

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2 minutes ago, Nogghan said:

its probably not dead, can you boot into safemode?

 

I haven't tried to boot into safemode. I can try this when I get home though. I'm at work just now and trying to research fixes on the internet here during quiet spells.

If it gets into safemode, is there something I should do next?

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1 minute ago, DezGalbie said:

I haven't tried to boot into safemode. I can try this when I get home though. I'm at work just now and trying to research fixes on the internet here during quiet spells.

If it gets into safemode, is there something I should do next?

just try and access the bios like you normally would, also if you changed the placement of your display cables or display arrangement it could affect the way it shows the flash screen and may not show it, i know i had trouble with this after i got a new 144hz monitor i couldnt get it to boot onto that monitor but i could get it to boot to bios on my old monitor so now i have a dual monitor setup

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3 minutes ago, Nogghan said:

just try and access the bios like you normally would, also if you changed the placement of your display cables or display arrangement it could affect the way it shows the flash screen and may not show it, i know i had trouble with this after i got a new 144hz monitor i couldnt get it to boot onto that monitor but i could get it to boot to bios on my old monitor so now i have a dual monitor setup

I'll definitely give that a try when I get home then. I did recently change around display cables when moving the system from one room to another so hopefully it's an easy fix!

In the meantime, if anyone else has any further suggestions then it would be greatly appreciated

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5 hours ago, Nogghan said:

just try and access the bios like you normally would, also if you changed the placement of your display cables or display arrangement it could affect the way it shows the flash screen and may not show it, i know i had trouble with this after i got a new 144hz monitor i couldnt get it to boot onto that monitor but i could get it to boot to bios on my old monitor so now i have a dual monitor setup

I think this might have been the issue - the changing around of cables when I moved the system. First thing I tried when I got home was to switch the HDMI cable to the other HDMI port on my graphics card. The system booted completely normally with BIOS splash screen. I never would have guessed that this would have been a problem. I would have thought that when just one of these ports is in use at a time that they would function identically no matter which one you used.

Good to know for future reference anyway. Hopefully it'll be fine from here on out!

Thanks for the replies

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8 hours ago, DezGalbie said:

I think this might have been the issue - the changing around of cables when I moved the system. First thing I tried when I got home was to switch the HDMI cable to the other HDMI port on my graphics card. The system booted completely normally with BIOS splash screen. I never would have guessed that this would have been a problem. I would have thought that when just one of these ports is in use at a time that they would function identically no matter which one you used.

Good to know for future reference anyway. Hopefully it'll be fine from here on out!

Thanks for the replies

yeah it took me like 10-15 mins being like.... WTF??? when it first happened i was like... REALLY!?!

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