Computer help needed - Windows 10 buggered my BIOS

[ZoyzaSorris]

IF the other one is locked we need a new computer problems thread don't we?
With that in mind, as I currently have a MASSIVE computer problem that is on the bring of making me kill myself and everything else within a 5500 nautical mile radius, I thought I'd start one.

My issue is a bit specific and I doubt anyone will be able to help but never mind.

Three days ago I had a lovely fully working hand-built desktop computer, pretty top-end back in late 2014 but now obviously a little out of touch (running Windows 10). Light of my life, apple of my eye. Then I tried to save a bit of C: drive space by getting Windows to clean up some system files, and then on restart it steadfastly refused to get past the Gigabyte motherboard splash page that comes up on immediate boot up. That flashes up for a second and then disappears leaving a black screen.

SO Windows is AIDSed then, I think.

Well at least I can bugger about in the BIOS menus and stuff and maybe try and make a USB stick to boot from to try and sort this, right?

No, because the BIOS stuff disappears into blackness before you can do anything about it. Sometimes you see the beginning of a sub-menu pop up if you hammer the relevant key as fast as you can on boot up but it disappears before you can do anything useful (basically I just want to get into the boot menu and boot from a Windows installer USB).

Then just always this infinite useless dark void of dormant pixels. So it seems that somehow as well as suiciding itself Windows has fucked my BIOS as well somehow.

Stare into the void for a while and that void becomes me, I must kill, destroy, burn. Best have a break.

It's a Gigabyte GA X99 Gaming 5 Motherboard. I find a manual online and am excited to see you can switch between two alternate BIOS chips. Maybe Windows has fucked one and I can get to the other one and start again, afresh, rebuild. A solution!
Run upstairs and compare the diagram with the reality and find out that the manual is for the X99M, not the X99. No switch on the X99. SO it has a second BIOS sitting right there but it's nigh on impossible to force the computer to use it. Fuck.

There's also a facility to flash the BIOS from a USB stick if you turn on the computer with the stick in a certain socket and no RAM installed. Spend hours and hours trying to flash different iterations of the BIOS and sticking RAM in and out, removing everything else, all cards, disks etc.

Occasionally I get a few seconds in the various menus but always get to black before I can achieve much. And this seems completely unpredictable, no pattern to when it will give me more time or when it will refuse to start at all and just reset before anything comes up.

I've tried resetting the CMOS multiple times with a jumper, removing the battery multiple times including overnight. Still the same unpredictable nonsense. It's a fucking hellishly stressful nightmare.

I thought at least, nuclear option,  I can just get a new motherboard, surely the equivalent must be pretty cheap by now, maybe I'll be 70 quid out of pocket or something, but you can't get them new any more (unsurprisingly, it's five and a half years old) and can't seem to find any second hand either. Even finding something compatible seems to be a huge nause (4 x 8Gb DDR4 RAM + Intel Core i7 4770K 6-core, LGA 2011-3 socket).

I can't afford a new computer and desperately need it for pretty much everything productive I do. Any flipping ideas? Current last hopes are : a PS/2 keyboard I have coming tomorrow (maybe it might be more responsive than USB?), and some nutter on the net saying you can force the computer to revert to backup BIOS by shorting pins 1 and 6 on the main BIOS together. Sounds like a recipe for fucking things up even worse if you ask me!

Please help
Please help
Please help
Please help
Please help
Please help
Please help
Please help

[Barry Admin]

The sticky was locked because if there's a whole forum for computers and computer problems then make separate threads, don't just dump everything into one single massive one. That's already ruined the books forum. Thanks.

[ZoyzaSorris]

Ok BA, makes sense, apols, have renamed to make more specific

[Wilbur]

Looks like there are still some motherboards available which can utilise those components.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASHATA-LGA2011-3-Computer-Motherboard-Mainboard-default/dp/B07WYMVR98

There are some cheaper directly from China around as well but that will probably mean a longer wait. Have you swapped out all the components other than the power supply and see if that makes any difference to the bios flashing off ? Then swap back in one memory at a time stick and try again ?  Bear in mind that your cleaning up exercise may be entirely unrelated  and coincidental.

[ZoyzaSorris]

Thanks for looking into it - I did find those unbranded chinese motherboards but thought they looked dodgy as fuck and bloody expensive considering both their non-branded nature and that they are less well-specced than my current one that I bought for a similar price nearly 6 years ago! Ulp. Still if that's what it takes as a last option... grrr.
Was still hoping someone might have a miracle idea for saving my existing setup I spose. :(

[Uncle TechTip]

Does the machine shut down when it goes to black, like the fans stop? Are you able to try a different power supply, in case it's this which is crapping out?

[peanutbutter]

Windows updates have overwritten the UEFI portion on my hackintosh laptop repeatedly, from what I recall I had to go into windows and actively select it to boot into a mode where I could even access the bios to allow booting from an alternative drive to the one they've written the windows boot shit to.

With that in mind, is it possible the motherboard itself is okay and the issue with with the boot partition on the disk? Which could be resolved by accessing it on another machine and fixing whatever's fucked?

[ZoyzaSorris]

Does the machine shut down when it goes to black, like the fans stop? Are you able to try a different power supply, in case it's this which is crapping out?

Sometimes it shuts the power down and resets entirely, other times it stays alive indefinitely (feeding the monitor some sort of signal too as that stays on) but with a completely black screen. It's just really confusing that the gigabyte stuff obviously works to an extent as the screen comes up but then decides to go onwards to some sort of boot process that never happens, without giving you time to do anything.

I don't have another PSU to try but I don't think it's the PSU (an absolute way overspecced tank of a thing), I'm 95% certain soemthing ahs corrupted the BIOS (or UEFI as suggested??)

[ZoyzaSorris]

Windows updates have overwritten the UEFI portion on my hackintosh laptop repeatedly, from what I recall I had to go into windows and actively select it to boot into a mode where I could even access the bios to allow booting from an alternative drive to the one they've written the windows boot shit to.

With that in mind, is it possible the motherboard itself is okay and the issue with with the boot partition on the disk? Which could be resolved by accessing it on another machine and fixing whatever's fucked?

I reckon it is something like that - but I have tried disconnecting all disks and peripherals until I only have one stick of RAM in the machine and a USB keyboard and nothing else, hammering any of the startup options to try and get in there before it fades to black but no joy... argh

[JesusAndYourBush]

You can't ruin a motherboard by buggering about with system files, the motherboard will be fine unless it's a massive coincidence and it decided to go kaput at the same time as you mucked about with the system files.

Do you have a floppy drive connected (or can you connect one?).  I got out of a fix once when I messed with a system file but managed to boot to a command prompt using an old "emergency boot disc" I had saved.

[Wilbur]

Did swapping in another PSU make any difference ?

[Sherman Krank]

Zoyza is your monitor connected via HDMI? If it is then that's likely your problem, some BIOS/EUFI don't display properly and/or freak out if you try to access them via HDMI.

As to your original issue, I did the same thing a few years ago (apparently some of the files windows tells you are safe to delete are actually active update files). From memory I fixed it by going through some convoluted process to get it to boot up in safe mode then did a sys restore as I'd created a restore point before deleting anything because Microsoft.