Have I bricked my Dell Optiplex? Can't access bios.

I was trying to clone a HDD using Acronis Disk Director.
The app showed all drives ie the one to clone to, the usb flash drive and the main drive on the pc.
It appeared to be going OK but said the pc needed to restart. Strange, I thought.
When it restarted, it couldn't find the boot manager file.
The only option it gave was F12 which seems to be the bios one time update.
No bios was present on my flash drive as I wasn't expecting to alter anything.
I turned the pc off and now it seems the bios isn't present.

I disconnected everything, removed the cmos battery, pressed the power button for 10 seconds to discharge everything.
Reconnected everything, but the screen is black.
The pc fan runs and the DVD drive flashes for a few seconds, then nothing. The screen stays black. No startup logo, or anything else.
I tried disconnecting the hdd and pressing F2 and Esc, but no joy.

I have a new bios on a usb flash drive but can't get anything to appear on screen.

Any help is greatly welcome, please.

I know nothing about Acronis, so I can't comment on that program's operation (I use Macrium Reflect).
However, doing whatever disc operation should not have affected the BIOS. This suggests something else happened.

Do you get any other options with F12 at power on? e.g. accessing the Dell diagnostics on the hard drive is done through F12.

The CMOS reset procedure is to power off, disconnect the mains (AC) power cord from the power receptacle or at the power supply then hold power button in for about 10 seconds to drain any residual power. Then remove the CR2032 battery for at least 10 minutes. Then reinstall battery, reconnect mains and power on and try.

Dell has some BIOS recovery procedures. I don't remember if the 9010 is included in the BIOS recovery but if you are lucky it is and you can at least recover BIOS. If not you are probably looking at a motherboard replacement.
https://www.dell.com/support/article...tablet?lang=en

Thank you.
To be truthful, I was doing this while consuming 3 pints of beer so I don't remember it as well as I should.
I've done the job many times before, with no problems.
The only option I had was to press F12.

That gives a 1-time bios update option but, with no alternative bios available, I can't see what happened.
I only disconnected the cmos battery for about 10 seconds, while pressing the power button with mains power disconnected.
I'll try what you said.
If only I can get to the bios page I should be OK.
I have Win 10 on a usb drive, so if I boot from that I should be able to let it do a repair. I can't get to bios, at present.
Thanks very much for your help.

I work the Dell forums. If there is no BIOS recovery option then the motherboard needs to be replaced. There are several, from forum posts, that have tried replacing the BIOS chip. Dell has a written policy on a BIOS update that corrupts the BIOS and a motherboard replacement (if its less than 5 years old) but this doesn't fall under that as it wasn't a BIOS update that caused it and its over 5 years old (Documentation is dated 2011 to 2015).

F12 should show boot drive options and an option to access the Dell hardware diagnostics. But if the BIOS is corrupted to the point of not showing that, it may be a lost cause. Being a "Legacy" PC, decision needs to be made on whether to repair or replace.

Doing the clone and getting the restart message sounds like there was a Windows update at the same time as the clone. That is just a guess but could have happened. Why the BIOS corrupted??? Murphy's Law...

On my Dell, as soon as I push the power button, I then immediately select F2 and it proceeds into the Bios setup....YMMV !

https://www.dell.com/support/article...system?lang=en

Dell said:

Note: To boot to the UEFI BIOS without entering Windows, use the steps below:

Power on the system.

Tap the F2 key to enter System Setup when the Dell logo appears. If you have trouble entering Setup using this method, press F2 when the keyboard LEDs first flash.

Try not to hold down the F2 key as this can sometimes be interpreted as a stuck key by the system.

The user noted he tried F2 without any luck. Reason I've never mentioned it in any of my posts.

fireberd said:

The user noted he tried F2 without any luck. Reason I've never mentioned it in any of my posts.

ones memory goes first and then sight....I read, reread and skipped right over the F2 I now see....back to the peanut gallery form me ! However. when I did see the F2, I wonder what they are meaning by that ?

I tried disconnecting the hdd and pressing F2 and Esc, but no joy

When you pressed F12,that attempted to update the bios,which was not completed and the end result is an unusable motherboard.
The only viable solution is to return the board to Dell and see if they can/will reflash it for you.