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#1
PC won't boot past first BIOS screen
Greetings,
I have big problem with my ~3 year old PC which started a few days ago.
The problem:
When I turn on my computer I see the BIOS splash screen, and if I don't touch it, it will remain on this screen indefinitelly. I can get past this screen by pressing the tab key (to see the BIOS POST Message), or by hitting DEL to run Setup; however, I never get into the setup screen, it simply moves on to the BIOS POST Screen.
On the BIOS POST Message I can seethe usual messages such as
"Initializing USB Controllers .. Done."
"12280MB OK"
but no error messages signifying that anything is wrong.
I can hit <F8> which then says "Boot Selection Popup menu has been selected". Or <ALT> + <F2> which then triggers the message "ASUS EZ Flash 2 will be executed".
However, again, it never goes past the actual BIOS POST Message.
The keyboard keeps being responsive, I can enable / disable shift lock, etc.
What I've tried so far:
At first I thought the battery may cause this, I tried
- booting with a fresh battery (CR2032)
- booting without a battery, including leaving it without power overnight first
- clearing the BIOS with the reset pins on mobo, and then booting
I then tried to make sure any excess hardware wasn't the problem
- I only left keyboard and screen connected for all further tests
- booting without any harddrives / optical drives connected
- booting with only 1 stick of RAM (there's 6 slots which are all filled with identical RAM)
- booted with another graphics card
- booted with no graphics card, didn't really do much, I expected beeps, but motherboard didn't make a sound, it never does, is there a way to turn on the "error beeps" on motherboards?
I realize this has little to do with WIN7 as the kernel is (I think?) not even loaded yet at this point. But I've been told this forum has a lot of computer wizzards, including for hardware issues.
I guess my hope is that any of you have run in to a similar problem and have a magical fix for me, but if not I think my only option will be to buy a new mobo, and probably a new PC alltogether.
Thanks in advance for your help.