Screen remains blank for five minutes during startup before the motherboard appears
Screen remains blank for five minutes during startup before the motherboard appears
So I encountered an unusual issue.
Yesterday, my computer was functioning perfectly. It has been operating smoothly for many years now.
Today, when I turn it on, a blank screen appears. It remains black but stays illuminated for about five minutes. After that, the motherboard logo appears briefly, followed by a slow loading of Windows. Once I log in, the taskbar takes roughly a minute to load completely and display all icons before the PC resumes working normally. Nothing seems to have changed.
What exactly is happening? Why does it take so long to boot?
I attempted to reset the BIOS but had no success. I’m also unable to access the BIOS settings because the BIOS logo appears before loading. I was wondering if there are other methods to enter the BIOS settings besides pressing the delete key during startup.
My PC specifications:
i7 12700f
RTX 3070
24 gigabytes of RAM (1x8 and 1x16, functioning properly for years)
I replaced the motherboard battery recently.
I bought a new PSU about a month ago – BeQuiet! 850W.
I’ve heard that the motherboard battery could be dead, which might explain this problem.
Additionally, if I restore to my Windows restore point (which I set up about a month ago), will it erase all installed programs and games? Or will it simply reset Windows settings? I’m also uncertain whether Windows is connected to this issue.
Solved it. It was the motherboard battery. Such a silly thing. MSI claims to be gamer pro BLA BLA and can't place a single notification about changing your battery. I almost dismantled my whole PC. Hope someone who has the same issue finds this thread. Just change the mobo battery guys!
The problem has started again. After replacing the new battery, it remains unchanged. Both SSDs and HDDs are connected, yet Windows still only recognizes one of them. I'm unsure why this happened after the battery change. Perhaps reinserting it would resolve the issue.
In Disk Management, the first disk is listed as Unknown and not initialized. Any attempts to initialize it result in an error stating the disk doesn't exist, even though it appears in Disk Management.
UPDATE:
One of my HDDs (previously visible) was connected through a USB enclosure. Disconnecting it restored normal operation, making the other HDD visible online. I suspect that after the battery failure, some settings reset and the PC attempted to boot from USB or USB-connected HDD, causing confusion. Now I'm hesitant to plug it back in.
Additional UPDATE:
The second HDD is still disconnected. It now shows up in My PC, but clicking on its folder triggers an error: F:\Program Files is not accessible. A device that doesn't exist was specified.
Hey, rcheulishvil,
I faced a similar problem with my old intel dh67cl MB. The issue began after installing the OS Windows 10, which wasn't released when the machine was on sale. When I turn on the PC, it displays a loading screen and remains there for about two minutes before loading to the desktop. After that, everything works normally. This has been happening for nearly seven years. Last month, after a BIOS update, the problem resolved, and now the PC boots up in just 10 seconds. I also had to turn off fast boot because this model had compatibility issues with Windows 10.
Hope this helps.
So I disassembled my PC. Removed the HDD that wasn't showing up; without it, the system started working properly. Placed the faulty HDD inside my USB enclosure and connected it to my laptop—PC refused to use this drive. Ran HDD Sentinel and my oh my... it's at 0% health.
I'm surprised because I have older HDDs that still have 94-95% health. I don't know what happened to this one. Once I reconnected it, it booted fine, but the Sentinel still shows 0%. Probably needs to be discarded.
It's mostly working now, but during any restart I could run into the same issue. So, the defective HDD was the cause.
Wow, what a coincidence,
After receiving a message from my MB, it was time to replace my battery. I went to a nearby shop, bought a new one, and changed it. After a few days, the PC began showing random errors and wouldn't boot. It didn't display HDD or RAM issues, so I suspected a bad battery. I replaced it with a trusted model from a known shop, and everything worked again. However, my perfect HDD failed! Luckily, I used recovery software to recover my important data. That was the last HDD; now it's all SSD.
Glad you found a solution to your problem.
Cheers.