Asus BIOS Corrupted

Asus N56VZ 2012. Removed 1 BIOS boot entry, and then after rebooting, it is always black screen, 100% black, nothing else for even 1 second. HDMI to external monitor is black too. No other recent changes or damage. I have tried removing battery, holding power button for 30 seconds. Downloaded BIOS EC update, extracted file, put onto MBR FAT32 32GB USB 3.0, had no effect. Manual is incomplete, it does not say where CMOS battery is, and I cannot find it, after removing entire laptop case. Manual does not have any specific instructions for BIOS Flash, as some brands have unusal instructions for that, I have seen.

Why can I not find the CMOS battery? I should not have to remove the entire motherboard to find it, that would not be a logical design. What are the next troubleshooting steps? Thank you.

Because its a laptop you will have to unscrew the bottom cover and open the laptop up.
Just try reflash the bios. if you getting black screen straight away when powering on not looking good.
Out of context thought you were talking about failed flash as i miss read your post, the issues seems self induced by the given context.

What is the context did this just happen randomly? or did you try updating the bios and then this happened? Could also be a screen issue if it was at random.

Might help if you explain this further "Removed 1 BIOS boot entry"

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After reading over your post more unplug the HDMI cable and just let the laptop run its native screen while troubleshooting. Area for inconsistency here.

Asus got my BIOS advertised incorrectly on their website (G 752 VSK). I know it's rare, but I mention in case.

Asus 2012 UEFI 16GBDDR3 Laptop N56V(z) Veracrypt version from april 2023 Win10 22H2 Pro Encrypted C Windows system partition with Veracrypt. Booted to WinPE USB, deleted all partitions on PC system disk, then in UEFI, removed Veracrypt boot entry option, saved, restarted. It never booted since then. It is always black screen, 100% black, nothing else for even 1 second. The HDMI to external monitor is black too. No other recent changes or damage.

I have tried removing battery, holding power button for 30 seconds. Downloaded UEFI EC update, extracted file, put onto MBR FAT32 32GB USB 3.0, had no effect.

Asus made it as difficult as possible to remove CMOS battery, I won't forget that when buying a laptop in the future, CMOS battery removal did not have any affect.

Removed RAM.

What are the next troubleshooting steps? Is this a Veracrypt super secure blank mode? I did read about that in a couple of places, but I never explicitly gave it permission to do that.

Well do you get a post screen or splash screen? or is it just black screen right away? There is a boot loader involved so the assumption is because you cannot boot the computer then this is the problem.

The boot loader should come after post though so you should at least be able to get into bios.

I am not overly familiar with Veracrypt sorry, but from looking at the docs failed boot means use rescue disk or power on the computer with the encrypted hard drive removed.

The question stands do you get any display at power on or just straight to black screen?

has to be that you are trying to boot a the drive when its still encrypted or there is discrepancy now with the boot loader no other way around it so there looks to be a removal procedure that you may of missed steps.

or the computer won't boot a hard drive that is encrypted now because you have tried to set the parameters of the computer back to a stock computer and now you are seeing the effect of Veracrypt doing what its supposed to do.

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After reading over this some more and if i am reading your situation correctly you mention that you removed all partitions? so this would include any boot loaders as well as the primary partition if this was the case.

The computer is not going to boot if you did this. There is now no boot loader and there is also no primary partition or even anything on the hard drive.

You would need to reinstall windows if this was the case.

I am very, VERY familiar with Veracrypt and Truecrypt. Have been using Truecrypt for years and years and was a member on their forum before the "lavabit situation" and all went to hell. Seriously, lookup lavabit on Wikipedia...

Okay, your issue is most likely NOT UEFI/BIOS related. If you can boot a live disk such as that PE Windows, it's obvious your UEFI/BIOS is fine. Having said that, and as a test, get into UEFI/BIOS with the shortcut key on bootup and try last known good configuration. Of course you can't see anything on bootup, so just keep pressing the shortcut key as the computer starts and hopefully you can get into UEFI/BIOS.


Apparently you press and hold F2 until BIOS/UEFI shows up. [Notebook/Desktop/AIO] How to enter the BIOS configuration | Official Support | ASUS UK

Or keep pressing the Delete key. How to Remove Inactive Accounts on Twitter | Small Business - Chron.com

BrutalMoose said:

Booted to WinPE USB, deleted all partitions on PC system disk, then in UEFI, removed Veracrypt boot entry option, saved, restarted. It never booted since then. It is always black screen, 100% black, nothing else for even 1 second.

I initially missed this part because i was skim reading This would suggest they nuked the hard drive. I think at this point its not a bios issue or a Veracrypt issue its user error.

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They would need to reinstall windows if that is the case and their post is reading as it sounds.

I think also maybe not fully understanding the ramifications of what they are doing before they do it might be at play as someone literate would know that removing primary partitions and boot loaders is going to result in black screen. Not taking a shot or insult just an observation.

The initial issue was probably just boot loader but now that they nuked the drive its morphed into user induced outcome and they would need to reinstall windows at this point.

BrutalMoose said:

Asus made it as difficult as possible to remove CMOS battery, I won't forget that when buying a laptop in the future, CMOS battery removal did not have any affect.

This is true for most laptops. In fact, I have a very old Intel Atom CPU based Dell Mini 910 Netbook who's CMOS battery died that I needed to replace. I had to tear down the entire Netbook to get to the CMOS battery! Once I did that I fixed that crap with a retro fit CR2032 CMOS battery holder that is easily accessible in the back of the computer. I'll post a picture, it's quite kool...


Anyway, remove the hard drive, get into BIOS and try a last known good config. If you now have video with the HDD removed before eve getting into BIOS, it means there is still data remnants on the drive that was apparently wiped. You can use a HDD tool on Hiren's boot CD to fully wipe the drive. Or you plug the drive into another computer and full erase that way. I think you missed a small partition when you said you deleted partitions. Maybe the EFI partition.

F22 Simpilot said:

In fact, I have a very old Intel Atom CPU based Dell Mini 910 Netbook who's CMOS battery died that I needed to replace. I had to tear down the entire Netbook to get to the CMOS battery! Once I did that I fixed that crap with a retro fit CR2032 CMOS battery holder that is easily accessible in the back of the computer. I'll post a picture, it's quite kool...

As promised...