UEFI Boot Hangup Question with SecureDoc

[Unhappy Camper]

I have a Dell Precision T3610 with Win8.1 Pro 64 and I went to install WinMagic Secure Doc on a Samsung 840 EVO drive that I installed in the machine so I could take advantage of the hardware based encryption of the drive. The T3610's BIOS was set for UEFI, Secure Boot was disabled, and Enable Legacy ROMs was enabled. The machine was working normally before Secure Doc was installed. During the installation process I had issues and found out after the fact that Secure Doc doesn't support the T3610 with UEFI.

Bottom line is that I can no longer get to BIOS on the computer. When I boot, the standard F2 or F12 to get into the BIOS just hangs up as if the computer is looking to boot from somewhere else. I tried emergency boot disks in both the CD drive and the USB drive with no luck. I followed Dell's "reset CMOS" process of unplugging the machine and removing the battery with no significant luck. I also put the original non-encrypted hard drives back in with no change.

Obviously, I would like to return the machine to the original state and start over, but I can't get to the BIOS or boot from a drive. The SecureDoc folks tell me that they do not write to the BIOS. This leaves a few questions:

1. Can UEFI be put a computer into a mode that will prevent the user from accessing the BIOS even with a reset of the volatile portion of the BIOS?
2. In this situation, how can I restore the machine to its defaults? I have the original uncorrupted drives and was also able to deactivate the SecureDoc encryption on the 840 EVO via a different (i.e. working) computer.
3. Does WinMagic's claim make sense? Dell's Statement of Volatility states:
"No information pertaining to user applications or data is stored in these devices, however, they do store administrator and/or hard drive encryption passwords if those features are enabled by the user."
I would think that SecureDoc might enable the features that Dell mentions
4. If SecureDoc does write the flash portion of the BIOS or the BIOS was corrupted, how can the computer be reverted/re-flashed if it doesn't boot?

One of the nice things about computers has always been that you can tinker with the machine knowing that you can always get back to your starting point. That makes this particular problem rather disconcerting. Perhaps it is my lack of understanding of UEFI.

Thanks for the help

 

[i7Baby]

Read the PC manual.

Try your recovery disk (if you have one)
OR
Reset cmos - power off, remove the battery from motherboard, wait 10 mins, put the battery back, power up. You should be able to get into bios.

 

[Unhappy Camper]

Thanks for the help.

I reset the CMOS and did a power cycle. No change.
Recovery disk was not accessed when I tried to boot with it. I tried the Dell disk, the Secure Doc recovery disk, and a True Image emergency disk. I also tried a bootable USB jump drive. No change.
The manuals say to reset the CMOS. (Which I did).

Actually, I have done quite a bit of research and haven't found much beyond the "reset the CMOS"

Read the PC manual.

Try your recovery disk (if you have one)
OR
Reset cmos - power off, remove the battery from motherboard, wait 10 mins, put the battery back, power up. You should be able to get into bios.

 

[i7Baby]

If you can't get into bios, then I suspect you've got a bios virus or your motherboard has failed.

Remove your hard drive and put it in another pc then re-install Windows. That'll wipe your drive, so back up any data you want to keep.

Try it in your pc.

If that still fails and a cmos reset doesn't work, you'll have to replace your motherboard.