[SOLVED] Can a corrupted BIOS stop my PC from even starting at all?

[REALOldNick]

Gigabye GA-P55A UD3R. This is an oldie. I read an article that showed the BIOS Battery next to the BIOS chip, accompanied by a dual BIOS switch. Mine has it over near the IO slots, with no apparent dual BIOS switch. Is there one in the old girl?

Ironically I recently posted a question about whether I should upgrade. I may have my answer.

What I had done. I went into the BIOS settings and changed the overcloccking from 22X to 24X. I also thought about also altering the RAM speed multiplier but was warned that this could cause instability and failed boots so I left it at Auto. I then hit F10 to save and exit.

What happened. When I tried to reboot I had a message that said the PC could not boot, because of a corrupted file. I tried t get the exact message but suddenly the whole machine shut down.

The net result now is that the machine will not even power up. No fans, nothing,
What I have tried.

Lots of reading.

Checking the PSU's voltage on a cable that comes straight from the PSU. It seems to be dead on both 12 (yellow/black) and 5 V (red black) lines. Curiously the PC still powers its USB ports (?): this I don't get.

So. Can a dud BIOS totally stop the PC from even powering up? Is it worth trying another PSU? I have one available, but it also is ina PC that is suss. I will give it a go and hope against hope. If it's not worth even trying. If the BIOS is corrupt and I have no backup, am I screwed anyway?

Please ask me for more/better info. Just allow that I now have no access to any PC info from here in.

Any help appreciated.

 

[RARRAF]

Yes
remove the bios battery wait a min or two replace and restart.

 

[REALOldNick]

Thanks for the reply.

Dunnit. No go. 🙁 Even tried a new battery.

PSU next.

Nick

 

[REALOldNick]

OK. Here is the story. It's a bit amusing, but may help someone.

The reason the battery trick did nor work was that I WAS NOT ACTUALLY REBOOTING 🙄: when I was continually restarting the machine under duress, it would self-reboot into the Win interface...if it worked. When I retried, the PC was "cold" and would just sit there. All I had to do was actually press the start button. 🙁

BUT, then there was the bootmgr problem. So I did some reading, and up came the idea of using my rescue drive, in my case a thumb drive of Win 10's system. I had one, being a good little boy, so I tried it.....Whenever I plugged it in at boot level or in the BIOS management level, my keyboard would not do anything gaaah!

So I delved into the BIOS setup, first trying resetting to fail safe (HAH!) defaults, which did nothing. So, noticing that the PC would not show "Booting from CD-DVD" as its first boot message for Windows boot, I checked the boot device order. It had changed: the drive that had my OpSys on it was last.

I changed the order to make it first and everything is absolutely fine. When the boot order went wrong I have no idea. I certainly did nothing to change it.

And that is my saga.

Nick

 

[DRagor]

. When the boot order went wrong I have no idea. I certainly did nothing to change it.

And that is my saga.

Nick

Resetting BIOS (by removing battery for example as you did) can change boot order.

 

[REALOldNick]

AH. OK. That would explain it. Thanks for that piece of advice. Funny thing is...no...let's leave it 🙄

Nick