SOLVED! --- Help! No BIOS, no Boot (Motherboard Error -- A2 Code)

captaingraviton

captaingraviton

captaingraviton

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Joined
16 Mar 2016
Posts
17
Hey Friends,

I've had my Overclockers PC for nearly five years now, it's been fantastic. Today though, I went to boot it up and it "sounded" normal, it still sounds like it's running fine, except there was no BIOS or splash screen and the screen is black. The monitor notified me it was going into Power Saving Mode and nothing has happened. The power is whirring away as normal but the motherboard currently shows the error code A2.

The only thing I have done is remove the CMOS battery, checked it, replaced it, no help at all.

What should I do?

CG

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Specs
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Asus X99-A/USB3.1 Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Intel i7-5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3
be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 CPU Cooler
Corsair Vengeance 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit
Samsung SM951 256GB M.2 PCI-e Gen3 8Gbps x 4 AHCI Solid State Drive
Super Flower Leadex GOLD 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black
PNY Nvidia Quadro K2200 Graphics Card - 4GB GDDR5 - 640 CUDA Core
Seagate 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD
Dell P2715Q 27" 3840x2160 IPS 4k Widescreen LED Monitor
 
I'm still in a pickle, but, here's an update:

I've removed all the drives, SSD, HDD and even the DVD drive. I pulled out the CMOS battery and waited an hour before putting it back. I've removed three sticks of DDR4 RAM and just left one in (in slot D1). I removed the Nvidia Quadro K2200 Graphics Card and gave it a little blow and magic wave and then put it straight back in the original slot (I don't know why I did this part, but I did it). Now when I boot it up my Q-Code Error is "b6", and the little BOOT LED light is shining a kind of orange. There was no POST beeps and the monitor remains black with no signal whatsoever.

I'm just off for a little cry...
 
Thanks, I'll try the CMOS jumper thing first.

The GPU is the only one I've got and I don't see the Motherboard as having anywhere to plug the monitor, so I'll leave it in for now (*)

The CPU is hidden under a massive heatsink and fan and I'm really nervous about pulling all that off too (and are you supposed to clean it with alcohol and re-apply heat paste afterwards -- I've no paste and the alcohol is for the weekends), so I'll skip that too (*)

* I'll report back after the CMOS trick if there's anything different happening, if not, I'll take the CPU and GPU off and try and get a POST beep at least.

Thanks, brb
 
Update:

I had difficulty finding the CMOS jumper pins (I was referring to the wrong manual -- duh!) but I sussed it and shorted them. With the GPU in, and obviously the CPU, I powered up. I still have a bright orange Boot LED light error, a Q-Code now of 99 (which the manual tells me is "Super IO Initialization") and also, a new one, a red LED over "PWR_LED / PWR_SW" the switch next to it is green.

So, what does this tell you? (If anything?) and what should I do next? Buy a new GPU and/or CPU?
 
I've just pulled out the GPU, just to see if it made a difference and now the Q-Code reads "d6" -- ("No Console Output Devices are found" -- makes sense). The only other notable thing is that in addition to the bright orange boot device LED, there's a bright white VGA LED as well.

It's not looking good is it?
 
I'll do that right now, I just have one question about the Motherboard 24 and 8 pin thing. Do you mean the power connector? I ask because there is only an 8 pin power plugged in (with an empty 4 pin close by). It's been like that since the day I bought it with no problems.
 
Hey Quartz, I haven't tried a new CMOS battery, but I did remove it and check it with a multimeter (3.2 Volts) -- it seemed okay to me? I haven't removed the Motherboard as that idea gives me the willies, but I have vacuumed/cleaned/blown away all the dust as best I can. I'll check for popped capacitors properly, now...
 
I don't think it is the SATA cable either and agree that that will need straightening. I will say that this was my very first thought that this was my problem because the other end of that cable had broken. It was a 90° angle plug and had broken. I still had new spares and replaced it as it was. I'll use a different socket because it bends at a funny angle through that gap.

I'll buy a new CMOS battery as well, just because.

Having said all that, is there anything else left to try?
 
On that page of the manual on your link, the LED is the bottom one, "BOOT_DEVICE_LED" -- bright orange, (then skip to the next page and also "PWR_LED" bright red).

I've spoken to Overclockers (who I originally purchased it from) and I'm trying to get them to do an out-of-warranty repair for me (obviously I'm happy to pay for it) as I don't fancy buying other CPU's, GPU's or getting a new Motherboard without testing (or knowing what's up) and wasting my time or making things worse.

I've never flashed my BIOS before, not overly confident, but maybe I'll find a tutorial somewhere and try that as well.

It's all very odd as it has been working at 100% for five years and no real reason for it to conk out like this all of a sudden.
 
UPDATE! (And good news!)

Desperate, I took the shell of my PC to my local PC repair shop (If the PC needed new GPU's or CPU's, I didn't have any to test with, and I'm not comfortable with handling CPU's anyway, so I figured let the shop do it), anyway, they had it on their bench and they ended up reflashing the BIOS (he talked about re-merging it and updating it) and now it boots fine every time!

So thank you, everyone, for your help with this, it's been brilliant and I've learned a lot.

Hopefully, someone in the future with this problem can skip to the end and try re-flashing the BIOS first to save time!

CG
 
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