Need help. Cannot access the BIOS.

[skapplin]

I have El Capitan installed on my GA-Z77X-UP5 TH i7-3770k system w/GTX-650 Ti Boost and 16 GBs of RAM. It was working perfectly until I made a change to my config.plist in the EFI. When I restarted I held down the F12 key in order to change the boot device. The AMD Bios splash appeared but no menu. Just a black screen with backlights. Cannot access the Bios with F12 key or DEL key. No indications as to the cause. Cannot boot a thing because of this.

Obviously, something is amiss. I've tried booting from the start button on the motherboard. I've reset the CMOS. All I got for my effort was a one time default splash screen but not startup of any kind. I have not tried removing or changing the battery because it is sitting under the GPU and is inaccessible unless I remove the GPU card.

Up until this small alteration to my config.plist file in the EFI the system worked perfectly. I'm not sure what the problem is nor what to do in order to fix it. I'm not altogether a novice since this is my fifth or sixth build, but this is something I've not seen before.

Could use some help.

 

[n3oNLit3]

The one time I experienced this issues on my Gigabyte board, a CMOS reset switch wouldn't fix the issue. I had to manually remove the battery. YMMV, just my experience, although on a different board

 

[skapplin]

The one time I experienced this issues on my Gigabyte board, a CMOS reset switch wouldn't fix the issue. I had to manually remove the battery. YMMV, just my experience, although on a different board

That is what I was afraid of because I must remove the GPU card to get access to the battery. Thank you for at least confirming the need to do that.

 

[n3oNLit3]

Yes it can be a pain, I have to remove one of my GPU's to access it as well...

 

[Anachronaut]

I had this problem with a board that is different than yours. Try disconnecting all of the drives. Remove the battery and put a jumper over the CMOS reset pins for at least 10 min. Remove the jumper and reinstall the battery. This should get you to the BIOS. In the BIOS, check your boot options. If you see anything that doesn't look like a physical hard disk (you do still have them disconnected, right) then you need to read this:

[GUIDE] Remove extra Clover BIOS boot entries & prevent further problems

 

[skapplin]

Many thanks for this. I will explore it once I decide to access the battery. I have switched back to my iMac running El Capitan, so right at the moment I am not motivated to fix the hackintosh. I built the box three years ago, but in those three years my fine motor skills have been affected by my diabetes which makes it sort of difficult working in small quarters. My hands shake and sometimes cramp up.

I may have to wait until I can find someone who can give me a hand. Very frustrating to know what to do but not being able to do it. It's a real PITA getting old. LOL

Again, thank you for your help.

 

[skapplin]

I had this problem with a board that is different than yours. Try disconnecting all of the drives. Remove the battery and put a jumper over the CMOS reset pins for at least 10 min. Remove the jumper and reinstall the battery. This should get you to the BIOS. In the BIOS, check your boot options. If you see anything that doesn't look like a physical hard disk (you do still have them disconnected, right) then you need to read this:

[GUIDE] Remove extra Clover BIOS boot entries & prevent further problems

Thank you for your help.