Question PC not booting/doesn't POST/Black screen unless CMOS is reset in which case it only boots into BIOS ?

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Feb 25, 2023
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Hi, I really hope someone here can assist with this as I have tried various things and my knowledge has hit a wall and I have reached the limits of my experience. I scoured the internet for fixes to my problem but was unsuccessful which is why I am making this thread as a last cry for help. I will list below the things I have attempted to do in order to fix this so far and at the end, I will list my specs.

First I will describe a short timeline of what led to this happening. This is a brand new PC that I assembled this month, all the parts are brand new excluding the CPU, RAM and a couple of HDDs I use for storage, along with 1 m2 SSD nvme. The pc was working fine until yesterday where it could not boot from sleep mode. I have not used sleep on this PC before this instance and upon returning home after a few hours I pressed buttons on the keyboard, the PC lit up as normal however there was nothing on the display, I then suspected a monitor issue/cable, more on this in a bit. I have also acquired a new nvme v2 m2 SSD 2TB that I installed windows 10 on prior to this and the most recent addition was a RAM stick of 16gb 3200mhz ddr memory. The PC worked fine and recognized the RAM and there were no issue with the boot or anything. I also overclocked my CPU prior to this slightly and there were again, no issues.

Now on to where the problems began. After attempting to wake the PC up from sleep mode, it was giving no display, the monitor simply had no signal going into it, no backlight or mouse showing, nothing.
I tried hitting the restart button, and same thing, no matter what I did, the display simply would not turn on. I then started to troubleshoot the monitor and hdmi cable. I tried swapping the cable, and the same result happened. I tried unplugging the hdmi and plugging in my other monitor into the motherboard graphics via DVI just in case, still nothing.
Once I restarted the BIOS by removing the CMOS and shorting the pins, did the computer display light up and gave the 'press f1 to enter settings' message, this is so far the only instance where anything happens display wise. This made me rule out the possibility of any monitor or cable faults as it is clearly working, the issue lies somewhere deeper.
Once I am in the bios after pressing F2, I am able to update it, change settings and so on, but no matter what I do, once I press save and exit I will boot into a blank screen again. This also applied by trying to override boot into the windows from boot menu.
A quick rundown of the fixes attempted from here onwards:
  • Removed the new RAM stick and tried turning the pc on
  • Left only 1 RAM stick and tried turning the pc on
  • Updated BIOS successfully (2806 version)
  • Reversed update to 2083 version as the update produced the same result
  • Reset BIOS to default (already accomplished by resetting bios and updating it but still)
  • disconnect all usb devices
  • disconnect HDDs from MB
  • replaced the CMOS battery
  • reconnected front panel switches again
And that's everything I can think of so far, again these are brand new parts and I highly doubt that this is a PSU issue. It just doesn't make sense that the only response I get is upon a CMOS reset. I have also read that ram voltage could affect it but I have already tried running with only 1 stick. I have 3 RAM sticks 2x 8GB running at 1.2V and 1x 16GB new stick I just got which has 1.35V. The auto BIOS setting sets this at 1.2V seemingly, however I have tried running it with one of the 8gb sticks already alone in different slots. (don't think I've tried all 4 slots yet but they are recognized in the BIOS no matter what RAM configuration I try.

PC specs:
CPU - Ryzen 5 1600
GPU - RTX 3060 zotac
RAM - 32GB DDR4 (2x 8 sticks and 1x 16gb stick) 2x8 2400 MHz and the 16gb states 3200mhz but in BIOS it actually runs in 2133Mhz for some reason
Storage: 2x HDD (storage and the other still has old windows installed in 1 partition) 2x M.2 SSD nvme (1 windows)
OS - Windows 10 64 bit PRO
PSU - 750w cooler master bronze
Motherboard: ASUS Prime B550-A
Any help would be greatly appreciated bros, if I think of anything else I will update the main post.


UPDATES!!!!

GUYS

I think I have narrowed down the issue,
it might be related to the GPU firmware for displayID that nvidia made a tool for, it affects two series of cards in the 30xx series, namely the 3080ti and the 3060 (which I have).

However my problem is I do not have a spare PC to replace the GPU and update this using the tool, is there any way to do it via another method?

Jayztwocents made a video about this on youtube, however I initially thought it does not apply to my case since I do not even have an option for primary graphics in my bios, so no way to check if it is defaulting to cpu or gpu or whatever. But the symptoms I have read others faced leads me to believe that it might be this.

UPDATE 1:
I WAS ABLE TO GET INTO WINDOWS on my old boot from the HDD, this eliminates a hardware fail, now I just wonder what was causing the issue. I did copy/paste most of my files from the appdata folder and some other documents from my original C drive into the new one not sure if that caused the issue, I will now reinstall windows on my ssd

UPDATE 2:
NEW PROBLEM
Upon making a bootable USB windows installation media and formatting the ssd with the windows installation, the pc still wont boot to usb when placing it at the top of the boot order. I managed to get into it by overriding the boot in the bios however once the PC restarts after windows gets ready I am once again left with a black screen. Thus unable to complete the installation.

UPDATE 3:
I was able to get bios to boot every time without the necessity of removing the cmos battery or shorting the jumpers every time by flashing the bios to an older version specificallhy 2403 due to seemingly compatibility issues with my 1st gen ryzen (1000s series) . However now I am facing a new issue, when trying to install windows I boot into usb withiut issues, start the installation and upon step 2 completion whereby windows must restart itself to finish the installation it boots into a black screen again this time with the backlight ON (so no video input problem like before). Any fixes to this would be greatly appreciated.
 
Last edited:
Feb 25, 2023
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did you unplug the other hdd and ssd when you install windows?

whats weird is that I cannot finish the windows installation since once the pc restarts I am back at the no video input issue of not booting, so far the only thing that got me into windows and the usb boot stick was using the boot override option in the bios. I really wonder what is causing this issue
 
Feb 25, 2023
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0
10
UPDATE :
I was able to get bios to boot every time without the necessity of removing the cmos battery or shorting the jumpers every time by flashing the bios to an older version specificallhy 2403 due to seemingly compatibility issues with my 1st gen ryzen (1000s series) . However now I am facing a new issue, when trying to install windows I boot into usb withiut issues, start the installation and upon step 2 completion whereby windows must restart itself to finish the installation it boots into a black screen again this time with the backlight ON (so no video input problem like before). Any fixes to this would be greatly appreciated.
 

jakubpawlinski

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Jul 25, 2014
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Quoted video is
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQG153s1NIM
, literaly saved my sanity, mobo and gpu

ASUS - ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING AM4 Motherboard
Zotac RTX 3080 Ti AMP HOLO 12G

In my case there was way out:
After full power down (turn off PSU), turning PC on, resetting CMOS the UEFI screen would load.
If I go in and out saving changes it will boot to windows.
Making any change in UEFI would cause return to vicious cycle.
So for last 10 days I was clearing my cmos to boot into windows.
 
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