Asus laptop

[Big Jim]

Customer brought in an Asus K55V, not booting
the error message on screen said insert correct boot media and restart.
I went into the bios and selected the HDD as the boot device and now it will not post.

Currently running check disk on the drive see what that turns up.

Customer description (as always) was poor but it sound like this happened during a reinstall of windows and it gave a message about something failing and reverting the changes (they think)

Why the hell won't it post though ?

Things I have tried
plugging in external monitor
pressing escape or delete whilst booting
removing battery and holding power button for over a minute to try a hard reset
powering backup with no battery attached

 

[NYJimbo]

Will it post if the drive is removed and you put a bootable DVD in ?

 

[Big Jim]

Will it post if the drive is removed and you put a bootable DVD in ?

I can hear the disk spinning but nothing else.

It won't post:
with HDD in + DVD in drive
without DVD or HDD
without HDD but with DVD in drive

How can a simple boot option in bios change like this stop it from posting ?
It was working when it came in the shop and I changed this option on front desk before booking in and nothing.

Check disk found errors and fixed them btw, found free space allocated in the MBR so looks like the MBR has been corrupted.

 

[Larry Sabo]

CMOS battery voltage? The laptop probably has a corrupted BIOS, which needs to be re-flashed or replaced. I hate it when things like this happen just after laying my hands on it.

 

[NYJimbo]

How can a simple boot option in bios change like this stop it from posting ?

Like Larry said it could be a corrupt BIOS, but it also could be you got one failure that looks like different one.

Sometimes as a southbridge chipset is failing you will lose things on the PCI bus before it totally fails. For example it was common for people with the
HP DV6000 and DV9000 laptops to report wifi and/or dvd failures and then shortly after the whole machine would not boot. This was due to a southbridge chipset failure (BGA chip).

You might actually have had a failing SB, as the HD could not be seen properly, but then as you used it the thing warmed up enough so it finally failed and on the next reboot you got nothing.

Its also very common for people to come in with a dead laptop and say "It was working fine, I shut it off and then when I went to turn it back on it, it powers on but wouldn't boot".

So, its possible you are deailing with that.

Like Larry says, I would try to get the BIOS reset or recovered/replaced if possible. But keep this SB chip thing in mind as that might be the culprit.

 

[Big Jim]

Like Larry said it could be a corrupt BIOS, but it also could be you got one failure that looks like different one.

Sometimes as a southbridge chipset is failing you will lose things on the PCI bus before it totally fails. For example it was common for people with the
HP DV6000 and DV9000 laptops to report wifi and/or dvd failures and then shortly after the whole machine would not boot. This was due to a southbridge chipset failure (BGA chip).

You might actually have had a failing SB, as the HD could not be seen properly, but then as you used it the thing warmed up enough so it finally failed and on the next reboot you got nothing.

Its also very common for people to come in with a dead laptop and say "It was working fine, I shut it off and then when I went to turn it back on it, it powers on but wouldn't boot".

So, its possible you are deailing with that.

Like Larry says, I would try to get the BIOS reset or recovered/replaced if possible. But keep this SB chip thing in mind as that might be the culprit.

I was kinda thinking the same thing (and hoping it isn't that at the same time)

However the guy rang me first to tell me what it was doing, when he bought it in it was doing exactly what he said, so all I did was restarted it went into bios and pointed it to the hdd (which is showing up in windows on another machine) and since then the laptop has booted to a black screen.

I am not too familiar with these new windows 8 integrated bios'es so wondered if there was any windows 8 trickery going on here.

 

[NYJimbo]

I am not too familiar with these new windows 8 integrated bios'es so wondered if there was any windows 8 trickery going on here.

Have you tried every possible function key right after powering on ? Many laptops today will not show anything, especially asus but then show the windows 8 swirly thing.

I would shut down, power on and beat the hell out of each key from ESC to F12, one key per boot attempt and then cycle power and move on to the next key.

Its possible its stuck in something and you might get lucky with that. I had a Win8 Asus ultrabook that wouldn't show anything until I got its attention smashing one of the FN keys.

 

[Big Jim]

Have you tried every possible function key right after powering on ? Many laptops today will not show anything, especially asus but then show the windows 8 swirly thing.

I would shut down, power on and beat the hell out of each key from ESC to F12, one key per boot attempt and then cycle power and move on to the next key.

Its possible its stuck in something and you might get lucky with that. I had a Win8 Asus ultrabook that wouldn't show anything until I got its attention smashing one of the FN keys.

Just tried that - Nothing

Are the status LEDS telling me anything btw ?
When switched on
1st light on is power
then wifi and num lock come on
then wifi goes out, then caps lock gives a quick flicker and num lock goes out.

If I hold the power button down, about half a second before power off the wifi light flickers.

Think I am going to try an emergency bios flash and see if that works, apparently holding win key + B when powering on will initiate it, anyone can confirm or deny this ?
any particular thing I need to do with the usb stick or bios file before attempting this ?

just put the HDD back in to test as well and the HDD light comes on for part of this sequence as well, looks like there is some sort of life in the bugger then.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Sometimes as a southbridge chipset is failing you will lose things on the PCI bus before it totally fails.

You might actually have had a failing SB, as the HD could not be seen properly, but then as you used it the thing warmed up enough so it finally failed and on the next reboot you got nothing.

Bingo! You reminded me of an ASUS laptop (different model than OP) I repaired and customer said it wouldn't POST after he got it home. Sure enough, it was a bad SB BGA connection. A colleague (retired DEC engineer) discovered it was the SB, by pressing on it while trying to start it up. He fixed it by simply reflowing the SB and it's still working fine as far as I know. The BIOS feeds into the ENE or SB so if either is faulty, no POST.

 

[Markverhyden]

I agree with the others, it does sound like the motherboard. But as a last resort remove the regular battery as well as CMOS. Hold down the power button for 10 seconds then let it sit over night. Then try powering up with just the ac adapter.

 

[NYJimbo]

I agree with the others, it does sound like the motherboard. But as a last resort remove the regular battery as well as CMOS. Hold down the power button for 10 seconds then let it sit over night. Then try powering up with just the ac adapter.

This mobo has a rechargeable CMOS soldered to the board so he cant do that.

 

[Big Jim]

This mobo has a rechargeable CMOS soldered to the board so he cant do that.

CMOS Battery is removable, I will remove it before I leave it in about 10 mins.

I have spoken to the customer again and got a better explanation of what happened (as it was his missus that knew more about it)

So she had some sort of update that failed, which she "just clicked off" and carried on doing whatever it was she wanted to do fine.
She shut the computer down and next time it fired up it wouldn't work
it appears that have done a full windows 8 reinstall as all their files are gone from the hdd when I slave it to our test bench.
When it arrived to my shop it wasn't booting to windows it was asking me to insert correct boot media, when I went to the bios the boot options where pointing towards PXE boot, which I changed to the harddrive and that is when the laptop decided it wasn't going to work any more.

 

[NYJimbo]

CMOS Battery is removable, I will remove it before I leave it in about 10 mins.

Great. I googled it and saw a ML soldered battery.

 

[Big Jim]

Great. I googled it and saw a ML soldered battery.

Tried this and still no joy.
Going to send it to our board specialst.

I just can't believe that changing a bios setting can kill the mobo

 

[Markverhyden]

Tried this and still no joy.
Going to send it to our board specialst.

I just can't believe that changing a bios setting can kill the mobo

Pure coincidence.

 

[HFultzjr]

One thing I don't see mentioned.

If running Win 8, have you tried changing UEFI to Legacy mode?

And all the other hoops we sometimes need to jump through to get a bootable disk to boot.

I just read the post quickly, so if I missed something, my apology.


Duhhhhh..........my error, I just realized it won't POST, let alone boot.

Sorry!

 

[HFultzjr]

Does your model have the pin reset noted below.

http://support.asus.com/Troubleshoo...3&s=386&os=&hashedid=kE5VnnR4vrXQdDVT&no=1028

Don't know if this is related or not, just a stab in the dark.

P.S. If it's still under warranty, give Asus a call (good luck).

 

[Big Jim]

Does your model have the pin reset noted below.

http://support.asus.com/Troubleshoo...3&s=386&os=&hashedid=kE5VnnR4vrXQdDVT&no=1028

Don't know if this is related or not, just a stab in the dark.

P.S. If it's still under warranty, give Asus a call (good luck).

No I read about the PIN reset and got all excited then turned the laptop upside down and was met with disapointment once again

The only logic I can apply to this laptop is, it was obviously faulty for it to stop booting into windows, so when they selected to reinstall windows and the next thing the laptop is no longer pointing at the hdd as it's main boot device so it was slowly getting worse and for some reason me changing the bios to boot from the hdd again has made it fail completely, god knows how though, never seen that happen before.

Always feel guilty when it a system dies in our hands whether it is our fault or not!!