How to fix Gigabyte Aero laptop that boots into Aptio Utility for bios but not into Windows 10 or 11 or any kind of install USB and responds to no bios settings changes?

Question

Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR XD with Nvidia 3070 graphics processor Intel i7 11800H boots only into Aptio Bios Utility. Bios is up to date and works with Linus on NVME installed or on USB or external NVME or other kinds of hard drives. Only Windows won't boot. Had working Windows creation media for Windows 10 pro and 11 pro on USBs that would not boot. Also in forms of Ventoy and Rufus. No external media with Windows will boot. Nor would any of four working NVMes. I disconnected all power and pressed start button long enough to drain any static. Removed and exchanged two 8GB Crucial ram sticks. Tried all the possible combinations of Bios settings and cleared TPM. Set up both for Legacy and Bios booting with only difference that attempting to secure boot produced the warning that i was not set up for that in my LInux drives when I tried them. Every Linux thing works from live USBs to varied systems. This is a Windows boot issue. Only screen responses to Windows media was a blip that there was missing \EFI\Boot\Bootx.64.efi that makes me think bios is corrupted in how it looks for Windows boot files. My real issue is therefore how to flash with no way to reach install media if this is the answer? The .exe flash files from Gigabyte won't work in DOS mode so is there a tool somewhere for such cases or can a script be written for a Linux flash from an extraction of Gigabyte boot file offerings? This mess started by my making a Rufus copy of Windows 10 iso . acquired the right Microsoft way with their installation tool and Rufus in Windows to Go mode as I wanted to run an extra copy of Windows on a 128GB 3.0 USB drive for portabilitiy. Both the download to Rufus and the attempt to install into USB went at a snail's pace which I read was a function of this type of writing to USB so i patiently waited to magic to happen and instead it stopped installing just before you enter your data in that process. A message in a white box popped up saying that the installation had stopped and it was thought an update was missing that was vital to going ahead and I needed to connect to wifi which came up like it normally does in a successful installation but was slow and choppy about responding to my keystrokes. I finally managed to successfully enter and get wifi up. This resulted in a reboot and getting stuck at the wifi sign in for a time and another reboot. Soon it appeared to be a loop and so I shut the business down when it went back to the beginning.of what i thought was the start of the loop as it never went back to the Gigabyte page but acted otherwise like a reboot. When i next started up my PC after having it off for maybe an hour it did the same looping. So I let it go for hours with no progress and figurued i would shut it down and give up. Removing the USB left me in a PXE boot screen the next time I turned the machine on and when that was gone I found myself caught in the BIOS boot screen and no way to boot Widows situation. I tried a reset USB and all the keys f8 and f9 resets along with power offs and start button holding down where it automatically restarts and the f9 is supposed to boot you into a factory reset program or a PE screen. Repair tools did not work. Even Linux Testdisk showed nothing out of the ordinary. The corruption seems on the bios end of EFI startup and Legacy booting. Gigabyte support was to no avail as all they offered were reinstallation solutions and they could not even guarantee me they could fix the machine if I sent it in to them as the motherboard is 2021 production. Terrible for a computer I bought two years ago this June. Am I missing something in thinking someone could write a flashing script to adapt the extracted file of a working Gigabyte bios update or come up with an external flashing from another healthy machine solution? I know Tuxedo LInux makes bios flashes for their machines which a personal computer laptops. and I have a working stripped down version of their Linux on one of my hard drives having multiple linux installations on it. I am not technically educated in computers; just a hobbyist who plays with systems as a good mental exercise.

Answer 1

I followed a similar question which I googled using my issue of no access to windows and unable to even get a USB with a fresh bootable installation copy iso of 10 or 11 recognized. No matter how I fashioned the issue it only led to dead ends. The closest two questions were left unresolved and a chat with a Microsoft technician suggested I needed a bios flashing. I decided to try a CMOS reset by battery removal but had already found the connection resistant to access as shrink tape covered hard to reach. I again reached out to Gigabyte technical support number listed by Googling it. The tech asked why I wished to try that and I referred to the bios flash advice from Microsoft which was impossible without tools or a way only sending the machine in for repair could provide. I mentioned that I surmised that the battery was in the shrink wrap and that the partially hidden red and black wires leading to a connector was how it attached to the motherboard. I had tried to remove the clip but found it too tight and inaccessible to pull apart. The technician had me wait while he spoke to someone higher up for advise on disconnection and jumping to discharge current. He came back to tell me to Google my model which revealed how the disconnected connector looked and so I asked if removal with needle nosed pliers was the was to do the job and he said that is the advised way. I had already tried probing the side with a small screw driver only to compromise the integrity of the connector as when I finally got it off the top part of the clip split off. Then I used a screwdriver to touch the inside and back side on the board which worked like you had a jumper on the board. But it seemed to harsh an angle into the connector to know if I was touching the inner two connections so I made sure I also bridged what seemed like exposed connectors on the back side of the board connection. I had removed the laptop battery and the machine was not connected to AC power. The Idea is to get all power live and static out of the machine. This reset everything and the machine that had been stuck in bios utility when powered on went to post and booted into Windows 10 and then 11 installed on two internal hard drives. No data was lost and all works better than before the incident of trying to get Windows-to-Go made on Rufus installed. I surmise that the install failure followed up by an attempted automatic fix of going online and to Microsoft for some update which Windows thought was missing caught my machine in some PXE boot loop where the machine kept looking for a network boot and no way to hookup when the update failed. Just a guess but here is the solution: Disconnect the CMOS battery and treat the motherboard connector points as a jumper. It wasn't RAM as that had been disconnected early in the diagnostic process. Still, I feel getting all the electricity out of a machine might save a lot of headaches and unneeded flashing bios. THIS SHOULD BE MARKED AS SOLVED. Gregory Lawrence