Question [SOLVED] No BIOS screen

[baj1]

I have an old HP P7-1080T that wasn't used for a while with Linux Mint v19. It still works very well as-is, but since v19 is no longer supported would like to upgrade to v21.3.

I guess I had USB booting disabled because I can't boot off the install stick I made.

When I press the ESC key on power up to get to the BIOS screen, the boot stops, but I get no video output. It will stay this way indefinitely. If I press ENTER (whether seconds or an hour after boot is stalled), it continues to boot into Linux and everything works as it did. I tried F10 and F12 on power-up also. So it seems like the BIOS may be loading, but the PC isn't giving a video output.

I did some searching, but it seems like most of what I found was relating to no video at all, not a no-BIOS screen situation. The ones that were BIOS specific that I found were resolved with a new mother board, I really didn't want to put money into this system at this point.

I tried three different monitors and two different HDMI cables, as I read that could be the cause.

I know the BIOS screen worked previously, I've done this before, that's how I got v19 installed.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
-Brad

 

[Lutfij]

The board should have a CMOS battery on it, if you remove said battery, all settings will revert to factory defaults, and should trigger the board to go into BIOS.

 

[baj1]

Solved. I found a 4th monitor to test with that PC and that one worked! Dang, that was weird.