Enabling Secure Boot Results in Black Screen

Question

Hello! I first discovered this issue after I updated to Windows 11 and wanted to play a video game known as Valorant. Valorant uses a kernel level anti-cheat software that requires you to have TPM 2.0 and Secure boot enabled if you are playing on Windows 11. I was using a Gigabyte z390 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi, 2070 Super Founders Edition, i9-9900kf ; went into BIOS, enabled secure boot and tpm 2.0, but upon restarting my PC I was met only with a black screen. I tried using an old 1070 i had but the issue persisted. Cleared CMOS, did everything I could think of before eventually caving and buying a new motherboard. I was dumb though and went with the same motherboard model, and originally decided not to mess with it anymore and cut my losses with Valorant. Its been a few months though and I have really been wanting to play. I was wondering if anyone knew how to fix this reliably? I can't afford to brick another board. (maybe the board isnt actually bricked but I have no way of getting into the bios as the kf has no integrated graphics. I have a 6700k that is the same socket as the z390, but it doesn't support that chipset as while the sockets have the same number of pins they are organized differently or something along those lines from what I understand. I've attached my system information below, please let me know if theres anything else I can provide that might help.

Some more notes:
-I have NOT tried enabling secure boot on the new board. I am afraid of recreating the issue without being able to solve it again.
-Gigabyte BIOS Update list https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z390-AORUS-PRO-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios  -again, I want to be sure the issue won't replicate if possible!
-I do NOT know for sure if my old BIOS mode was set to Legacy by default, but I think it may have been, where as this board has it set to UEFI by default. (They are still the same model, however)

P.S. I read on a forum post that this issue appears sometimes with gigabyte motherboards, and that updating the bios could fix it. However, it is to my understanding that this issue is a result of some conflict with UEFI and Legacy graphics drivers, which I'm not sure how updating the bios would fix. I took a few computer science classes and built my pc, but this issue seems to be above my paygrade and keeps going over my head. Im having a hard time understand what's really happening.

Thank you for your time!

-Anthony

Answer 1

Your motherboard isnt broken.
I had the same issue today.

1.Unplug power from power supply

2. Remove graphic card
3. Remove CMOS battery (leave it for 5 min)
4. Connect your monitor via HDMI cable directy to the HDMI port in your motherboard
5. Put battery back on
6. Connect power to PSU
7. Turn on your PC
8. You can now enter bios and revert the changes you made

Please note that if you had your monitor plugged in via display port, you may first change the input in your monitor. At first, after i connected it via HDMI to fist the blank screen problem, it didnt work, but only because my monitor input was set to DISPLAY PORT instead of HDMI.

My motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus Z390 PRO WIFI

By the way, on the forums pleaople say that the blank screen is related to main drive being on MBR instead of GPT

MBR - master boot record

GPT - GUID Partition Table

W11 requires GPT partition.

Im wondering why installing W11 is so complicated, and nowhere i could find proper guide.

Answer 2

Hi There. I have dealt with this issue recently and apart from all the things we are doing there's one step that will give you the results you looking for.

Simply hold pwr + reset button after you removed the cmos battery operation, hold both for 10 seconds when you power up. It will restart about twice and it hopefully will bring back your gigabyte LOGO screen.

When it does do a optimized defaults then redo XMP profile for your ram and then go into windows. Then you can get to the real problem which is the gpu driver that you have to either roll back or update but you can do more research on it. This is a driver clash between gpu and bios. Basically when you power on the bios brain doesn't recognize the gpu as eyes so the bios don't send signal to eyes for vision hence you get no signal on screen. This is not a black screen issue... Wording is important. This is a no signal issue to monitor meaning the bios dont recognize gpu so protocol not sent.

I hope you find salvation in these methods... Sadly the trusted brands are failing us with their conflicting aoftware!!!

Answer 3

I can see how this might be helpful to some, but the majority of users here cant access that option since they/we had disabled secureboot and on restart couldn't access those files due to the system not booting correctly on restart.

Answer 4

Same problem happend to me now

I tried everything nothing worked sadly.

So what happened is that i updated my bios from the gigybite website

Then i enabled secure boot to play fifa 23, after restart i had a black screen no mouse and keyboard working they are not even lighting up

My cpu has no intgreated graphics card thats why i can't try to plug hdmi directly to mb

I tried clearing cmos still didn't work

I have been trying to fix this for 12 hours now still no solution

Win 11 is a disaster that's all i can say

Switching a simple option inside bios from off to on should not cause all these problems

Or coast people a new mb

If anyone else did find a way out of this please dont hesitate to replay to my comment im sure many people are having the same issue and its a costy one

Answer 5

If anyone still having that issue on:

Gigabyte Aorus Z390 PRO WIFI

Update your bios first. That fixed the secure boot blank screen issue for me.

My bios verstion was F12c from 2019, after an update to F12 from 2021, i could change secure boot settings without any problems.