Computer fails to boot, ignores keyboard, can not get to BIOS

Oddly, it has not caught fire.

On the 22nd, I put the machine to sleep. Next morning I woke it up and got a bizarre screen. I had only 3 iterations of "this PC" and two icons for file manager. Nothing that was running when put to sleep was on screen. My gut feeling was MS had done it to me again. I have had several updates done overnight that did not reboot correctly the next day.

So I left it going for a while. Drive active light would go on for a few seconds at sort of random intervals. Eventually (maybe 40 minutes) I was convinced nothing was happening. Sometime in that interval I believe Bitdefender showed up Maybe something else but it was not right. I saw it just before hitting power down.

I tried restarting several times. When I hit reset or power off It got no further than the BIOS screen asking me to press F2 or delete to get to the bios. Somewhere along the line I saw a message go past that said there was no keyboard. I could not get into the BIOS after many tries.

I tried booting with a USB stick built to use WinPE and a bunch of applications to do repairs. It should boot as either UEFI or the earlier boot process. That failed to do anything different. Machine not doing anything and F2 key will not get me to the BIOS.

OK- What I have.
Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe MB. Keyboard is an OmniKey. Mouse is a Logiteck wireless. I tried swapping an identical working mouse and RF plugin. The MB has no PS2 connector. The keyboard is attached to an adapter and into a USB 2 port.

Win 10, the Vanilla version. I had delay update set, but it has been months to maybe that night was my night.

I have gotten two different "Q Codes" that stayed up long enough to read. A2, which says IDE detect. Then it settles on E0 which says S3 resume is started(S3 Resume PPI is called by the DXL IPL). And that is where it stays.

I have found a bunch of posts in various places of the behavior, but none seem to match what I have.

Hope some of you guys have some ideas.

Put PS2 keyboard and try to enter BIOS. The as CountMike said - reset to factory defaults.

There is no PS2 input on the MB.

Re BIOS. Not arguing; just want to understand. What could I have done to cause the BIOS to get corrupted?

alternety said:

There is no PS2 input on the MB.

Re BIOS. Not arguing; just want to understand. What could I have done to cause the BIOS to get corrupted?

No idea why the BIOS is acting up. Let's hope that it is bad BIOS settings, rather than a corrupt BIOS.

Your motherboard has a clear CMOS button, rather than a jumper. I suggest that you use it. (Turn off the power supply, or unplug it. Hold down the power button for a 10 seconds to discharge anything remaining in the power supply. Press the CMOS clear button for a few seconds. Apply power. Pray.)

I did not change any BIOS settings in months. It was a stable machine.

Could an overnight download mess up drivers? I mean, worked when put to sleep, woke up broken. I have had issues before with Win 10 not doing real well with the drivers it installed. It seems to me that not being able to access USB (2 or 3) could point to a driver problem. On the other hand, the USB stick that should work to boot the machine is also ignored. Could that result from a BIOS setting problem? For instance, the "boot from" settings.

I am going to see if I can make a USB stick with tools that does not do UEFI and try that. I would really rather not reset the BIOS settings and have to do that over. Not because of the effort; but because I may have problems remembering the setup that worked.

One good thing about this is I finally got my wife's machine running; literally the day my machine failed to boot. So I at least have a place to access the internet and make new sticks.

alternety said:

There is no PS2 input on the MB.

Re BIOS. Not arguing; just want to understand. What could I have done to cause the BIOS to get corrupted?

I once had a corrupted BIOS on my Gigabyte MB due to a power glitch from a nearby appliance. I recovered from the secondary BIOS on the MB then reflashed the main BIOS to be sure.

alternety said:

There is no PS2 input on the MB.

Re BIOS. Not arguing; just want to understand. What could I have done to cause the BIOS to get corrupted?

I don't know what could have interrupted the bios but since it's messed up that is a suggestion :)

I once had problems with an external hub. I now only use direct USB ports on my PC or the USB extension ports on my monitor which work OK.