Question I enabled secure boot and now I have a black screen! Any ideas?

PCisverygood

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Mar 25, 2022
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Hi, wondering if anyone can help me. I recently bought a used gaming pc and I am having great trouble getting it to boot. About a month ago now, I went into my BIOS and enabled Secure Boot, nothing else, just clicked to enable secure boot. U didn’t mess with platform keys or anything, just clicked the tick box for secure boot. I saved the settings and the PC did not reboot as expected. It started to beep. 2 beeps for about 1.5 seconds, about a 2 second pause, and then weirdly, the system automatically turns off.
There is no display on my monitor, and as far as I am aware, the graphics card power and HDMI were plugged in properly. I tried removing the CMOS battery for one hour, and nothing changed. There was someone in my local area who does IT support, and I had him try to help me. He tried reseating the graphics card, and RAM, but nothing happened. He said maybe the CMOS battery was dead, so I even resorted to Amazon and tried replacing the CMOS battery, but still nothing changed.
I was informed by another Tom’s Hardware user that the beeps meant that there was a graphics card issue, about it not being compatible with UEFI. They suggested that I plugged my monitor into my onboard graphics port instead of my GPU. I have ordered a DisplayPort to HDMI converter for this to work.

(Also this may be unrelated, but I did update my NVIDIA Graphics Driver on the day of the issue, not sure whether this played a part in my GPU issues, or whether it is just a BIOS thing)
Anyway, now the PC is still in a completely unbootable state. No POST, just beeps twice, pauses, and then turns off automatically. Any help is much appreciated.

My Specs:
Motherboard: Intel DQ77MK
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1333MHz (manufacturer unknown)
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770S 3.10GHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB VRAM)
Storage Devices: Samsung SSD SM841 mSATA 128GB (Boot Drive, formatted NTFS)
Internal 1TB HDD (Manufacturer unknown)
2TB WD Elements 2621 External HDD
OS: Windows 10 Home
 
Apr 22, 2022
3
0
10
I know both of these questions are unlikely to bear fruit but, have you inspected the pins of the GPU for damage? Also, as this is a used computer, did you check for accumulation of dust in the PCIE port? I'm sure someone more tech savvy than I am will come up with the actual solution, but I noticed no one replied to your question. So I wanted to offer some type of help.
 
Hi, wondering if anyone can help me. I recently bought a used gaming pc and I am having great trouble getting it to boot. About a month ago now, I went into my BIOS and enabled Secure Boot, nothing else, just clicked to enable secure boot. U didn’t mess with platform keys or anything, just clicked the tick box for secure boot. I saved the settings and the PC did not reboot as expected. It started to beep. 2 beeps for about 1.5 seconds, about a 2 second pause, and then weirdly, the system automatically turns off.
There is no display on my monitor, and as far as I am aware, the graphics card power and HDMI were plugged in properly. I tried removing the CMOS battery for one hour, and nothing changed. There was someone in my local area who does IT support, and I had him try to help me. He tried reseating the graphics card, and RAM, but nothing happened. He said maybe the CMOS battery was dead, so I even resorted to Amazon and tried replacing the CMOS battery, but still nothing changed.
I was informed by another Tom’s Hardware user that the beeps meant that there was a graphics card issue, about it not being compatible with UEFI. They suggested that I plugged my monitor into my onboard graphics port instead of my GPU. I have ordered a DisplayPort to HDMI converter for this to work.

(Also this may be unrelated, but I did update my NVIDIA Graphics Driver on the day of the issue, not sure whether this played a part in my GPU issues, or whether it is just a BIOS thing)
Anyway, now the PC is still in a completely unbootable state. No POST, just beeps twice, pauses, and then turns off automatically. Any help is much appreciated.

My Specs:
Motherboard: Intel DQ77MK
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1333MHz (manufacturer unknown)
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770S 3.10GHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB VRAM)
Storage Devices: Samsung SSD SM841 mSATA 128GB (Boot Drive, formatted NTFS)
Internal 1TB HDD (Manufacturer unknown)
2TB WD Elements 2621 External HDD
OS: Windows 10 Home
Well for starters it always helps to figure out if its a hardware problem or a software problem. You could try this: first disconnect all of your storage devices and see if that allows you to boot into the bios. If yes, you could turn off Secure Boot and see if that gets you back to where you were before this all started. A second step would be to try booting from a usb stick containing either the Windows installer or a linux live distro; this would help you figure out if all of your hardware is still properly functioning. After that you would move onto disk analysis. One or more of your disks may be formatted with an MBR partition identifier rather than the GPT that Windows now expects.
 

PCisverygood

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Mar 25, 2022
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Just saying, I am a very novice computer user, so basically I can’t really troubleshoot issues myself as I literally do not really know much about computers.
 

PCisverygood

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Mar 25, 2022
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530
I know both of these questions are unlikely to bear fruit but, have you inspected the pins of the GPU for damage? Also, as this is a used computer, did you check for accumulation of dust in the PCIE port? I'm sure someone more tech savvy than I am will come up with the actual solution, but I noticed no one replied to your question. So I wanted to offer some type of help.
Hey, thanks for the response :)
Another user suggested that I plugged my monitor into my integrated graphics port to see if that works. I am yet to try it, but I do think that this may be part of my issue. They informed me that if my PC screen went black just by enabling secure boot, then my graphics card is not compatible with UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface). Luckily, I have an IGPU (Integrated Graphics Processing Unit) inside of my CPU, so I was told that maybe plugging my monitor into that might work.
 

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
You can't just move the cable to the motherboard output from the GPU output; if you can't access BIOS to fiddle with the PCI-Express settings, you typically need to physically remove the GPU as well.
 

PCisverygood

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Mar 25, 2022
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You can't just move the cable to the motherboard output from the GPU output; if you can't access BIOS to fiddle with the PCI-Express settings, you typically need to physically remove the GPU as well.
The only setting I changed before the issue started was the enabling of Secure Boot, absolutely nothing else.
 
Another user suggested that I plugged my monitor into my integrated graphics port to see if that works. I am yet to try it, but I do think that this may be part of my issue. They informed me that if my PC screen went black just by enabling secure boot, then my graphics card is not compatible with UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface). Luckily, I have an IGPU (Integrated Graphics Processing Unit) inside of my CPU, so I was told that maybe plugging my monitor into that might work.
You have to remove graphics card from the system first.
Then connect monitor to integrated graphics.

If discrete graphics card is present in system, then integrated graphics gets disabled automatically.
 

PCisverygood

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Mar 25, 2022
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You have to remove graphics card from the system first.
Then connect monitor to integrated graphics.

If discrete graphics card is present in system, then integrated graphics gets disabled automatically.
Ok, well according to my motherboard manual, integrated graphics is still enabled when a discrete GPU is present.
 

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Ok, well according to my motherboard manual, integrated graphics is still enabled when a discrete GPU is present.

BIOS.png
 

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Is there a specific easier way to remove the graphics card from a motherboard?

No.

I'm going to be brutally honest here. If you're unwilling to do this -- and it appears you are given that you keep trying to start arguments or find shortcuts that get you out of having to do this -- you either need to pay a professional (which may cost more than the PC is worth) or reconsider whether owning a desktop PC is the right solution for your needs. This is an extremely basic task that should have been done in the first hour of you having an issue like this, not something still not done in the second month.
 

PCisverygood

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Mar 25, 2022
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No.

I'm going to be brutally honest here. If you're unwilling to do this -- and it appears you are given that you keep trying to start arguments or find shortcuts that get you out of having to do this -- you either need to pay a professional (which may cost more than the PC is worth) or reconsider whether owning a desktop PC is the right solution for your needs. This is an extremely basic task that should have been done in the first hour of you having an issue like this, not something still not done in the second month.
Ok fine, I guess I will have to remove the GPU then, I mean, I have found the two screws that hold it in place, shouldn’t be too difficult
 

PCisverygood

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Mar 25, 2022
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Hey everyone, my PC is fixed now. Just needed to reseat the graphics card and all was fine. Thanks for your help :)
Also, I was able to get into the bios, but my boot devices were not listed, so I loaded defaults and windows booted :D

<BA awarded by Moderator>
 
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