Bios won't allow to upgrade nor to access it

[RobbeyRobert]

Hello and a happy new year !! i'm facing a rare issue with bios i've never seen before.

Little briefing: i upgraded the memory DIMM on the notebook without checking if it works, after 2 months and half i powered the machine ON noticing the blue lights turned ON but the screen was blank and keyboard didn't worked and HDD wasn't spinning neither. I thought it was an internal problem since it didn't reported any BEEPS which i thought notebooks should do as PC's do, WRONG. well i completely disassambled the laptop and found one particular SMD capacitor to be faulty or so i thought it was, i tried to get it off but failed. well at that point i thought it's over and i can throw it in the trashcan but luckily i had an idea (wish i had it before i took everything apart) i changed the RAM stick back to it's previous one and voula the notebook started.
--------------------------------------

So the main issue is this: i cannot access my notebook's bios !! which i need since it reports that HDD is faulty, and i have to press F1 at start up so it can continue booting windows.

The only time i can access the bios is when i take out the internal battery (the inside one) and take out the power supply and exterior battery
which than clears all bios settings, after that when i power it on, it asks me to either press F1 which loads system defaults or press F2 which takes me to the BIOS configuration.

Now after i press one of those buttons and it tries to load up windows, it asks me to press F1.. now no matter what i do, that is using internal and exterior USB keyboards or powering OFF and ON don't allow me to press F1 to boot up windows or F2 to enter bios, neither does Alt + F2 key work to bring up the bios flash screen.

Could it be possible that the chip on the Motherboard or something that stores the BIOS on it be damaged ??

After a closer look, at the board where the Capacitor is, revealed that there was no visible damage.
Notebook: Asus 1015PX.

Any help would be really appreciated.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Most likely you did not properly reconnect the ribbon cable for the keyboard after you took it apart AND your laptop probably does not support USB peripherals until AFTER the POST process unless the setting is changed in the bios to allow early USB support. Since you have reset the bios by removal of the battery that setting is likely unreachable now until you can get the normal keyboard to work again. Disassemble and correct the issue with the keyboard connections. I've done this myself a time or two. The ribbon cables can be VERY picky about how/where they make contact and are easily damaged.

 

[RobbeyRobert]

Most likely you did not properly reconnect the ribbon cable for the keyboard after you took it apart AND your laptop probably does not support USB peripherals until AFTER the POST process unless the setting is changed in the bios to allow early USB support. Since you have reset the bios by removal of the battery that setting is likely unreachable now until you can get the normal keyboard to work again. Disassemble and correct the issue with the keyboard connections. I've done this myself a time or two. The ribbon cables can be VERY picky about how/where they make contact and are easily damaged.

thanks for your reply, i'm sure that i connected the ribbon properly, i've triple checked it too, as for the USB keyboard it should normally allow early access since i used to connect a few different keyboards before it booted up and they all worked.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, I understand that you were able to use a USB keyboard before, but often on some laptops, especially those that came out around the time that we were transitioning from USB 2.0 to 3.0, and even some later models, you needed to specifically set the 3.0 ports for early enabled. If you have both 2.0 and 3.0 ports you might want to try your keyboard on one of the 2.0 ports.

Otherwise, I don't know what else to tell you. As I said, these ribbon cables can be very delicate and you might want to check the OTHER end of the ribbon cable, where it connects to the keyboard, as they can easily pull out from either end when there is even minimal tension on them, or just enough to break the connection. I've disassembled and reassembled probably 80 or more laptops and I've had this exact issue happen to me with the keyboard not working again after reassembly more than once. IN all cases when I went back and double checked that both ends were fully inserted, secure and the lock in place, eventually I was able to get them to work.