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.

Hello TVeblen,

thanks for the welcome, and yes, that's correct, I can not get into the BIOS settings. I can only get as far as the BIOS POST Message (the one which shows the memory OK status amongst other things).

The keyboard remains responsive, and the POST Message does as well, because when I hit F8 for example, the text on the POST Message will change saying it will move on to the Boot menu; but I never actually get past it.

The last thing I see is indeed always the same, it's a bunch of text:


[American Megatrends Logo]
AMIBIOS (C) 2010 American Megatrends, Inc.
ASUS P6T SE ACPI BIOS Revision 0808
CPU : Intel (R) Core (TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80Ghz
Speed : 2.80 Ghz

Press F8 for BBS POPUP
Press ALT + F2 to execute ASUS EZ Flash 2
DDR3-1066Mhz
Initilializing USB Controllers .. Done.
12280 Mb OK




(C) American Megatrends, Inc.
XX-XXXX-XXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXX-TYLERSBURG-XXXXXXXX-XXXX



The last thing is a serial key, not sure how personal it is to my PC, hence the Xs,

I've also tried to use the ASUS EZ Flash functionality to try and update BIOS to 0908, but hitting ALT+F2 only changes the line in that screen, and then nothing.

I actually have another PC I can salvage, I'll see if I can recover an onboard speaker.
I don't see any LED lights that could signify any problems on the mobo.

No luck on the speaker salvaging.

I'll check my old laptop for a speaker, meanwhile, booting with only the screen plugged in resulted in the same situation.