<< Solved >> BIOS borked by attempted Catalina upgrade - what next?

[SimonT]

After a series of disasters with a Catalina upgrade, I'm now nearly back to a stable system with Mojave again. But every time I shut down my computer, on restart it won't boot past the 'Gigabyte' flash screen. I can't boot into BIOS and holding down the 'del' or 'F12' keys does nothing. The only remedy I have found is to unplug it, remove the battery from the motherboard, wait a few minutes, put it back and hey presto - I can boot into Mojave with no problem.

This all began a couple of days ago on trying to upgrade to Catalina from a USB drive, though I also wrongly updated my Clover to the very latest version, which was a mistake I'm told. I'm now back on version 5099.

(My problems with the upgrade are outlined here: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/clover-upgrade-killed-my-system-advice-please.306017/ )

Can anyone suggest a way to remedy the BIOS issues? My OS works fine, but something is causing major issues with the BIOS, and I have no idea where to start. I don't want to mess around too much as I might make things worse. thanks in advance.

 

[SimonT]

I've tried changing the battery but now I can't get past the Gigabyte welcome screen - no way to enter BIOS.

 

[SimonT]

The more I try to fix this the worse it gets: I now have to unplug the computer, remove the battery, disconnect the graphics card and wait about ten minutes in order to get back into BIOS, do a complete reset - and I have to do this for every reboot. Also, three hard drives with previously working EFI folders are no longer booting into Clover. I finally managed to get the thing to boot using a freshly made Catalina USB install disk - although confusingly Clover Configurator shows the active install of Clover to be 5099, and I thought the Catalina USB would use a more advanced version.

Can anyone recommend a way to get from here back to a stable system?

 

[Edhawk]

Have look at this post #19 it is for another member with a couple of borked Gigabyte motherboards. The post explains how to force the system to swap to the 2nd bios, as Gigabyte boards come with Dual Bios setups.

 

[SimonT]

Have look at this post #19 it is for another member with a couple of borked Gigabyte motherboards. The post explains how to force the system to swap to the 2nd bios, as Gigabyte boards come with Dual Bios setups.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I used method 2 and the problem was quickly and easily fixed. I now have a stable system again, so problem solved.