Question American Megatrends UEFI: How to perform a hard-reset on a compact mobo with Intel Atom X5 z-8350 CPU?

[UglyStuff]

Hi everyone,

New here, I come in peace, with a question I'm not sure where to post on this forum, so I settled for this part.

I have this budget laptop, a Schneider SCL141 CTP, that comes with an Intel Atom X5 z-8350 "Cherry Trail" CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 32GB eMMC storage unit, and an Amercan Megatrends UEFI on a motherboard of unknown origin (it's branded as Schneider, but I suppose it was manufactured by someone else).

Last Windows Upadate didn't go well. The latest out-of-cycle KB (KB4550945) failed to install, the PC rebooted normally after a long wait, and when I restarted it a second time, I was greeted with a black screen, with only the Power LED lit up.

According to public litterature, you can enter the UEFI/BIOS on this PC by pressing the Del or Esc keys right after hitting Power. In my case, that doesn't work at all.

I also tried all the key combos suggested here, no luck.

This PC is out of warranty, so bringing it back to the shop is not an option, lockdown or no lockdown, because they'd probably charge me more on repair than the machine was worth as new when I bought it.

My question is: Do you guys know a way to perform a hard-reset on an American Megatrends UEFI (I think it's got an Aptio 4 or Aption V on it)?

I'm pretty sure the problem doesn't come from Windows itself, as strange as it may sound; I've read comments here and there about such issues involving a wild reset of the UEFI when Windows failed to boot.

I opened it up, took the battery out, also unplugged what I think is a teeny-weeny CMOS battery about the size of a lentil, left it untouched for several hours, hoping the mobo would bleed out and all would be well again after plugging everything back in.

Fat chance of that.

Found no jumpers, no regular-size CMOS battery, nothing of the sort.

If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'll be forever grateful, though I may not be able to buy them a beer anytime soon...

 

[UglyStuff]

Quick question for the admins/moderators: Since this question has been viewed almost a hundred times but has received no answer, should I move it to another part of the forum?

 

[USAFRet]

Quick question for the admins/moderators: Since this question has been viewed almost a hundred times but has received no answer, should I move it to another part of the forum?

You seem to have a very unusual system, with a very odd problem.
Likely no one actually knows.

Why didn't the Windows update work? Out of space on the 32GB?

Try a full clean install?

 

[UglyStuff]

Hi,

I don't know how it happened, just that first reboot after the aborted update went OK, then the second time I was welcomed with a black screen.

It's happened before, and I suspect it has to do with poor BIOS integration/protection, but I can't for the life of me know what went on.

I can't perform a clean install because I can't even boot the darn thing, let alone get inside the BIOS to change the boot order and that sort of thing.

It seems that the PC is bricked, but the Power LED lights up when I press the Power button. The screen is black, so I can't even know if Windows boots up or not, unfortunately.

I was hoping someone here knew how to force-reset the BIOS/UEFI on American Megatrends BIOS. There's probably a key combo to hit on startup that will do that, but all my research on the Web has been fruitless so far.