Corrupt bios maybe

[Brandon0413]

I built my nephew a PC for his birthday last September. It was running fine for 6 months. No overclocking. Everything perfectly stable. Not my first build at all. I'm an IT professional and deal with computers all day long every day.

Pretty sure the main bios is corrupt. CPU and DRAM lights on motherboard flash back and forth. CPU light stays on for longer and DRAM lights blinks real fast.

Holding the power and reset buttons down for about 10 seconds allows the PC to boot and everything seems fine. Ran memtest with no errors for a few hours. Ran prime95 for a few hours without any errors. All temps look good.

After shutting down and disconnecting the power cable, however, and the problem comes back.

I'm guessing it's reverting to the secondary bios after holding the power and reset buttons down for 10 seconds.
Is the main bios hosed? Can I flash it somehow?

X470 AORUS GAMING 5 WIFI
Seasonic FOCUS Plus 850 Gold
AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Corsair vengeance LPX 2x8GB
Crucial mx500 m.2 sata ssd
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 sc gaming
Cooler master hyper CPU cooler
Windows 10 pro

[pw2much]

Re: Corrupt bios maybe

I had somewhat the same maybe situation, I built an MSI Z97A system and for the likes of me couldn't understand why I couldn't turn on Media sharing in Networking & Internet setting or through the Windows Media Player. Now, this went on for years even when I reset Windows 10 w/keeping my setting and files it still would not work. It wasn't until I did a custom re-install did I rid myself of the problem, that being said, my OS was corrupt and had to be re-downloaded from the internet(clean copy) and installed a clean installation keeping nothing of the previous installation. I'm not sure this helps you but starting from scratch some times does the job right!! Don't forget to save all of your programs licenses in order to re-install the ones you've bought. Hopes this helps!! With Windows 10 acting the way it has lately with the bugs and all anything is possible. I have 2 other systems one of which is an Asrock X370 Taichi, Ryzen 7 1700x processor and the other an MSI Z97A Gaming 7, w/ Intel Core i5 4690K processor.

[Brandon0413]

Re: Corrupt bios maybe

I had somewhat the same maybe situation, I built an MSI Z97A system and for the likes of me couldn't understand why I couldn't turn on Media sharing in Networking & Internet setting or through the Windows Media Player. Now, this went on for years even when I reset Windows 10 w/keeping my setting and files it still would not work. It wasn't until I did a custom re-install did I rid myself of the problem, that being said, my OS was corrupt and had to be re-downloaded from the internet(clean copy) and installed a clean installation keeping nothing of the previous installation. I'm not sure this helps you but starting from scratch some times does the job right!! Don't forget to save all of your programs licenses in order to re-install the ones you've bought. Hopes this helps!! With Windows 10 acting the way it has lately with the bugs and all anything is possible.

Sorry, let me rephrase. Windows runs fine on this computer. No problems there.

The computer will not POST. But, it will if you hold the power and reset buttons down for 10 seconds. And when I had the computer in my possession it would work fine until unplugging the power from the wall or turning off the power supply switch. It is my belief that the main BIOS is corrupt and it is reverting to the secondary BIOS after I hold the power and reset buttons down for 10 seconds. Losing power causes it to go back to the main BIOS, which is corrupt...I think.

I'm going to try some stuff in the sticky about flashing the BIOS. A bunch of good info there.

[Brandon0413]

Re: Corrupt bios maybe

I had somewhat the same maybe situation, I built an MSI Z97A system and for the likes of me couldn't understand why I couldn't turn on Media sharing in Networking & Internet setting or through the Windows Media Player. Now, this went on for years even when I reset Windows 10 w/keeping my setting and files it still would not work. It wasn't until I did a custom re-install did I rid myself of the problem, that being said, my OS was corrupt and had to be re-downloaded from the internet(clean copy) and installed a clean installation keeping nothing of the previous installation. I'm not sure this helps you but starting from scratch some times does the job right!! Don't forget to save all of your programs licenses in order to re-install the ones you've bought. Hopes this helps!! With Windows 10 acting the way it has lately with the bugs and all anything is possible. I have 2 other systems one of which is an Asrock X370 Taichi, Ryzen 7 1700x processor and the other an MSI Z97A Gaming 7, w/ Intel Core i5 4690K processor.

Sorry, let me rephrase. The computer will not POST unless the power and reset buttons are held down for 10 seconds. Windows 10 is running fine on this machine. Take windows out of the equation and this computer still has the same problem.

I'm fairly positive that the main BIOS is corrupt and is not working. It fails over to the secondary BIOS when the power and reset buttons are held down for 10 seconds. But if you unplug the power from the wall or turn off the power supply switch for long enough it goes back to the primary BIOS and will not POST. There's a lot of good info in the sticky for flashing BIOS. I'm going to try and see if some of the steps there will allow me to restore the primary BIOS.

[Brandon0413]

Re: Corrupt bios maybe

I had somewhat the same maybe situation, I built an MSI Z97A system and for the likes of me couldn't understand why I couldn't turn on Media sharing in Networking & Internet setting or through the Windows Media Player. Now, this went on for years even when I reset Windows 10 w/keeping my setting and files it still would not work. It wasn't until I did a custom re-install did I rid myself of the problem, that being said, my OS was corrupt and had to be re-downloaded from the internet(clean copy) and installed a clean installation keeping nothing of the previous installation. I'm not sure this helps you but starting from scratch some times does the job right!! Don't forget to save all of your programs licenses in order to re-install the ones you've bought. Hopes this helps!! With Windows 10 acting the way it has lately with the bugs and all anything is possible. I have 2 other systems one of which is an Asrock X370 Taichi, Ryzen 7 1700x processor and the other an MSI Z97A Gaming 7, w/ Intel Core i5 4690K processor.

Sorry, let me rephrase. This computer will not POST unless the power and reset buttons are held down for 10 seconds. Then it runs fine. Windows runs fine. It passes memory and stress testing. Take windows out of the equation and this computer still has the same problem.

I'm fairly positive the main BIOS is corrupt and it fails over to the secondary when the power and reset buttons are held down for 10 seconds. It POSTs and runs fine on the secondary BIOS. But if the power is unplugged or the power supply switch is turned off for long enough, it recerts back to the primary BIOS and will not POST.

There is some good info in the sticky about flashing the BIOS. I'm going to see if some of the steps there will allow me to restore or flash the primary BIOS.

[Brandon0413]

Re: Corrupt bios maybe

Well, I replied 3 times in a row with almost the same exact thing thinking something went wrong. Wasn't sure if I got an error message or what, because it came up and disappeared real fast, going back to the main forum page. The third time I saw it said my message had to be approved first. Thanks for approving all 3 I guess. Can't delete them, though. Whatever. I'll let y'all know if I get anywhere with this. Don't have access to this PC. Need to get over there and try some of the steps in the sticky.

But in the meantime if anyone has gone through this could you please chime in and tell me if you were able to fix it or if you had to RMA or if you are just still using the secondary BIOS?

If you just search online for "CPU and DRAM light flashing" a lot comes up about this issue...

This forum used to be a lot more active...