Stuck at F9 / F10

[Tony D]

I'm working on an HP Mini. It's here just for a checkup. Last week it seemed good. Nothing needed. I put it aside while. Now it won't boot properly.

 

When you turn it on, it gets to the screen giving you the option to choose F9 to change boot device order or F10 to get to the BIOS. Then the BIOS screen shows briefly as expected. Then it goes back to the F9 / F10 screen and stays there. Pressing F9 or F10 does nothing.

 

I've pulled the hard drive - same issue. I'd expect it to say that no boot device was available.

 

I swapped out RAM. Removed AC and battery power. Pulled the BIOS battery. Problem persisted. While the hard drive was out, I ran chkdsk on it - no errors were noted. I put the hard drive back in and it started perfectly - Once. Thought I was out of the woods, but it's back to the original problem.

 

If I let it sit at the F9 / F10 screen, the CPU fan turns on after a few minutes so it's smart enough to know that there's heat that needs to be addressed.

 

At this point I'm open to any suggestions.

[allheart55 Cindy E]

Have you tried a different hard drive Tony?

[Tony D]

I haven't tried a different drive.

 

The machine exhibits the symptoms without a hard drive also. Without a hard drive I expect the machine to state that no bootable devices are found. I'm not seeing that without a hard drive. Also - I should be able to get to the BIOS, but pressing F10 does nothing. I've also tried using an external USB-connected keyboard.

[allheart55 Cindy E]

Could be the motherboard.

[Tony D]

At your prompting, I tried 2 other hard drives. Same situation.

[Tony D]

Motherboard - that's what I'm thinking. Just hate to see it happen on my watch.

[Rustys]

You have probably already tried and checked.

 

Have you tried to boot form a USB drive?

 

With some of the older BIOS you could change what the F9/F10 to F2/F12 (per say). You did state that you removed the CMOS battery. Have you checked to see if they are the proper key(s) or if they may have been changed back to the orignal.

 

From what you have stated looks as the motherboard is going.

[Tony D]

Thanks for you input. I haven't tried to boot from a USB drive. At this point I just want to see it POST.

 

I did remove the BIOS battery.

 

I read a thread where someone said the webcam was hanging it up. I pulled the webcam but the problem persists.

 

I also pulled the USB interfaces and wireless network card. It has to be the board.

 

There are two buttons on the board. They look like they reset something. One might be the BIOS password. Need to research these.

[Tony D]

Watching the screen closely this morning, I see CMOS Checksum Bad message flashed by very briefly. I had to restart it a few times to catch it.

Without RAM, I don't even get to that point. Just a black screen.

Pulled the CMOS battery and did see an RTC error.

I've read some posts that state low CMOS battery voltage can cause this problem. I checked the battery voltage under load (meaning the battery was connected while I checked the voltage). The voltage is 3.2 V which is well in spec.

 

I'm more convinced the board has failed.

[allheart55 Cindy E]

That's what it sounds like to me, Tony.