Access to the BIOS is not available.
Access to the BIOS is not available.
Windows 10 is installed on my PC, which has been running for several years without any hardware changes. I haven’t made any recent upgrades. My weekly scan used to run for about an hour before problems appeared, but it never alerted me. I experienced buffering while watching a movie, tried playing a game and encountered double controller inputs, which led me to restart. After restarting, the PC remained on the reboot screen for 15-20 minutes. A quick power button press didn’t help. Later, I saw a blue screen saying "invalid io boost state" and the system restarted, but then it stuck on the BIOS screen with spinning dots. I left it for about 10 minutes, then turned it off by pressing power. Now I only see the BIOS flash screen and instructions to press Del or F2 for UEFI settings. I’m unable to access the BIOS at all. I’ve tried unplugging the system for 5-10 minutes, removed all cables except the monitor and power supply, and attempted to boot from a Windows installer USB. The current setup is: AMD 5950X CPU, 32 GB RAM, GSKILL graphics card with RTX 3080, ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Pro motherboard, Wi-Fi enabled, Noctua NH-D15 SSD, and WD Blue 4TB M.2 drive.
open windows, go to settings, type "bios" in the search and you'll reach system > recovery. press "restart now" on the advanced startup tab, then enter bios from there. check if your keyboard lights up when you toggle it on or off while the PC starts. did you try unplugging your SSD as @whispous mentioned? the "io" indicates a boot disk issue—maybe you have a spare HDD or an older SSD to try. it would help to know if the problem is with the SSD or something else, just in case. someone on Reddit suggested it could be malware, but you seem more convinced it's not that. You also asked if quaked software was installed recently?
Nope, usb keyboard. The board and the mouse light up. Everything lights up. The fans spin. They don't spin on the GPU on that screen. I don't recall if there is a hybrid fan setting where they don't turn on until needed or not
The unlock indicator came on, yet I wasn't able to switch it. The SSD tip helped guide me correctly. I unplugged all storage devices and saw the standard splash screen, which is normal before initializing the BIOS. An old hard drive connected was likely the problem. Interestingly, it wasn't the boot device. I'll need to check if data was lost and assume most of it is elsewhere backed up! Thanks for the tips—I really value your help!
This suggests the disk might be damaged or failing. To investigate further, try placing the HDD inside a USB enclosure and see if it boots in Windows. If mounting is difficult, your PC performance will likely drop significantly until the drive stops working—possibly freezing Explorer.exe. If you manage to mount it quickly, back up your data beforehand since the drive is likely to fail soon.