PC Stuck after Motherboard splash screen in a black blank screen with blinking white cursor.

[galeamark7]

My PC is about 4-5 years old and gave me a lot of issues initially, mostly blue screens for at least 6 months. After several bios updates and driver updates the system became stable and i had no issues for over 2 years.

Recently it started giving me some issues like not switching off after shutdown, and occasionally hanging while loading windows. I ran several memtests and found a problem in 1 of the ram modules. I re-seated the ram and pc was stuck in Motherboard splash screen. Couldn't load into bios.

I tried the pc with 1 ram module and swapped around ram modules but it would not work. (note i had to remove cpu cooler because ram is situated behind heat-sink. I detached everything, usb sata etc. nothing worked. i disassembled cleaned and reassembly the entire pc (i did not remove mobo from case), it nearly booted once, hanged while loading windows and same problem all over. Stuck in mobo splash screen. finally after getting desperate i removed CMOS battery and re-seated it. Everything worked without issues. i tested all ram modules (1 by 1) with memtest, no errors after more than 3 tests on each module. i also tested each ram slot on mobo, no issues either. After i connected everything sata usb etc and it worked, restarted several times and even shut down and manually switch on and it worked. enabled wake on lan in bios, and the pc worked for a day.

the next morning same issue i am stuck on mobo splash screen, cannot even go into bios. again i detached everything and pc was not working. i cleared the bios again and everything is working as usual.

What could be the issue that forces me to clear bios every 1 or 2 days for pc to work?
CMOS Battery seems to be fine, i am not loosing time or anything like that, although i always keep my pc plugged. No new hardware changes. Also another weird thing, i have a button to clear CMOS but using that does not work. I have to disconnect power and remove Mobo Battery for pc to work after it gets stuck.

I am a programmer and worked as a pc technician before that. However I am not familiar with new hardware so maybe i am missing something.

The pc Specs

Mobo Asrock x79 Extreem 3. bios version 2.8 (No onboard Graphics)
ssd Ocz Agility 3 120GB
hdd WD 1 TB
hdd seagate 1TB
graphics nvidia GTX 560 TI
cpu i7 3820 quad-core 3.6GHz
Ram 16GB, 2 pairs of 4GB Hyper x kingston DDR3 KHX1600c9D3B1k2/8Gx
PSU 750W Energon

 

[RARRAF]

from what you are saying you need to buy a new CMOS Battery they are only watch type battery's and can get one for about £1 and that should fix it.

 

[Multipack]

The CMOS battery only keeps BIOS settings when the system is turned off. If your BIOS settings arent resetting on their own each power up then there's no problem with it.

Firstly try either restarting a few times until Windows Recovery Environment kicks in (as it should after a few failed boots) or if not, run the Windows ISO from a USB and try to repair OS. After the splash screen is where Windows initialises its boot and you obviously have an OS issue.

Whether that is due to the OS itself or a failing hard drive/board/PSU etc is obviously still to be determined.

The fact only a hard BIOS reset works could be a sign of a failing memory controller in your board and/or faulty RAM/RAM slots. A soft CMOS reset (pressing the button) wont clear the memory controller.

 

[galeamark7]

from what you are saying you need to buy a new CMOS Battery they are only watch type battery's and can get one for about £1 and that should fix it.

i unplugged the battery and tested it with a voltmeter. it is definitely dying and i will replace it, however i am still not 100% convinced it is a battery problem because none of the usual symptoms are occurring. will replace the batery and let you know

 

[galeamark7]

The CMOS battery only keeps BIOS settings when the system is turned off. If your BIOS settings arent resetting on their own each power up then there's no problem with it.

Firstly try either restarting a few times until Windows Recovery Environment kicks in (as it should after a few failed boots) or if not, run the Windows ISO from a USB and try to repair OS. After the splash screen is where Windows initialises its boot and you obviously have an OS issue.

Whether that is due to the OS itself or a failing hard drive/board/PSU etc is obviously still to be determined.

The fact only a hard BIOS reset works could be a sign of a failing memory controller in your board and/or faulty RAM/RAM slots. A soft CMOS reset (pressing the button) wont clear the memory controller.

It is definitely not an OS issue, when this happens, i cannot go to BIOS, i cannot press f11 for boot options. if i don't press anything or try to get to bios i am either stuck on mobo splash screen or on a blank screen. the blinking white cursor is in a different position when i try to get into bios for some reason.

As i mention in my 1st post memtests where showing errors before all this started. i ran about 15 memtests and all showed errors. there were n't many errors but the error bits difference was huge between read and write which shows complete failure occasionally!. Unfortunately when i retested the ram individually, and tested the slots individually, there were no errors and i ran a lot of tests. So there definitely might be a ram/slot/mobo/psu issue. The problem is that since failure is so random, it is impossible to identify (with my limited skills).

I was going to replace the ssd anyway because it is small and full and was going to upgrade to windows 10 so that would be a start.

 

[galeamark7]

from what you are saying you need to buy a new CMOS Battery they are only watch type battery's and can get one for about £1 and that should fix it.

Battery Replaced but still having issues. Also i rechecked old battery with my voltmeter and it was 2.89 V which means it still had a couple of years life. Earlier i must have gotten a wrong reading or had the wrong setting on voltmeter

 

[galeamark7]

The CMOS battery only keeps BIOS settings when the system is turned off. If your BIOS settings arent resetting on their own each power up then there's no problem with it.

Firstly try either restarting a few times until Windows Recovery Environment kicks in (as it should after a few failed boots) or if not, run the Windows ISO from a USB and try to repair OS. After the splash screen is where Windows initialises its boot and you obviously have an OS issue.

Whether that is due to the OS itself or a failing hard drive/board/PSU etc is obviously still to be determined.

The fact only a hard BIOS reset works could be a sign of a failing memory controller in your board and/or faulty RAM/RAM slots. A soft CMOS reset (pressing the button) wont clear the memory controller.

The problem returned even when i removed battery. However I noticed that every-time i replace battery i leaned slightly on a pci-e expansion card (for adding firewire ports), i suspected the card must have somehow not been positioned correctly. i removed, cleaned and re-seated the card and have not had any problems, but it is too soon to tell for now.

With regards to my ram tests, could the pci-e card somehow case a fault occasionally that could alter memtest results?? I don't think so but i am asking just in case

 

[zezuzaza]

This is the BIOS update problem. You may not installed BIOS correctly or the BIOS version update not compatible with your mobo. When you start to update your bios once, it always should give a problem like this every time. It is better to stick with the bios that comes from manufacturer itself and using it without once update bios.

 

[Multipack]

The CMOS battery only keeps BIOS settings when the system is turned off. If your BIOS settings arent resetting on their own each power up then there's no problem with it.

Firstly try either restarting a few times until Windows Recovery Environment kicks in (as it should after a few failed boots) or if not, run the Windows ISO from a USB and try to repair OS. After the splash screen is where Windows initialises its boot and you obviously have an OS issue.

Whether that is due to the OS itself or a failing hard drive/board/PSU etc is obviously still to be determined.

The fact only a hard BIOS reset works could be a sign of a failing memory controller in your board and/or faulty RAM/RAM slots. A soft CMOS reset (pressing the button) wont clear the memory controller.

The problem returned even when i removed battery. However I noticed that every-time i replace battery i leaned slightly on a pci-e expansion card (for adding firewire ports), i suspected the card must have somehow not been positioned correctly. i removed, cleaned and re-seated the card and have not had any problems, but it is too soon to tell for now.

With regards to my ram tests, could the pci-e card somehow case a fault occasionally that could alter memtest results?? I don't think so but i am asking just in case

I doubt it, but I guess so. I have never heard of a faulty or improperly installed peripheral pcie card stopping a system from booting into the OS myself but I guess its possible. If theres not an issue anymore its kind of academic anyway.

 

[galeamark7]

This is the BIOS update problem. You may not installed BIOS correctly or the BIOS version update not compatible with your mobo. When you start to update your bios once, it always should give a problem like this every time. It is better to stick with the bios that comes from manufacturer itself and using it without once update bios.

The bios update was done more than 2 years ago and i had no issues until last week, also i had to do it because it solved some incompatibility issues. Prior to the bios update the system was very unstable.

 

[galeamark7]

Cleaning And Re-positioning RAM and PCI Express Cards seem to have resolved all my recent issues. PC starts without Problems, i no longer have ram related issues and pc passed several memory diagnostic tests and memtests wich previously showed errors. Tested for 8 days without any issue.

I am now back to my initial problem, 1 every 10 shutdowns, the pc shuts down but does not turn off power. This Problem however seems to be completely unrelated and is not a big issue since it PC is totally usable and i have no performance issues. For this reason i will mark issue are resolved.

Thanks Everybody for your Help

 

[Multipack]

Hi there. Am glad you got the bigger of the problems solved, but the fact your system doesnt shut down is still a bit frustrating, and seeing as you have checked your memory it could be related to corrupt system files, a misconfigured Power State or ME driver issues amongst other things. Here are a couple of easy things you could try..

Check system files https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/929833/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files

Reset Power Mode to the 'Balanced' preset in Control Panel>Hardware & Sound>Power Options

Reinstall ME drivers by entering Device Manager>System Devices and right clicking on Intel Management Engine Interface and selecting uninstall. If Windows doesnt reinstall auomatically then you will need o download the driver from your board manufacturers website.

If none of these fix anything, there are other possible things you could try, although I do realise people dont want to spend all their time troubleshooting, but just some suggestions for you going forward.