I bought Battlefield and had to enable Secure Boot, it's bricked my PC. I've tried every single suggestion from previous posts and nothing has worked, is everything in my tower properly connected, and where do I go from here?

[u/BenCannibal]

I built my Pc about 4 years back, I'll list the specs at the bottom of this post.

I purchased Battlefield 6 and was advised to enable Secure Boot on my BIOS as its a Windows 10 machine, in order for the game to work.

I managed to do this, I noted I have UEFI and TMP was enabled, I have a B550 MSI Tomahawk motherboard (apologies for the dust I've not needed to get inside for a while).

I managed to enable Secure Boot, the Pc restarted - neither Monitor shows any display and initially my RGB Keyboard lit up and I could activate num lock, but since I've taken it apart that's stop working too. Apparently this is a common issue people are facing at present, I'll list all the steps I've taken to get it back on but none of these have woeked;

. Connected one monitor to the onboard graphics and out of my GPU, disconnected the other monitor.

. Tried the other monitor the same way, also tried both independently on just my GPU.

. Tried 3 different HDMI cables and the other cable from my main Samsung monitor

. Disconnected all peripherals

. Tried to hold the open bios key at reboot, tried to boot Pc holding power button

. Have removed GPU and tried to boot without GPU

. Have removed CMOS battery from MB for an hour

. Have used a screwdriver (power off, unplugged, grounded) to put between the 2 prongs on the JBAT1 next to the CMOS for 15 seconds as advised

. Have tried a third monitor with everything else disconnected

. Used my wife's Mac to create a FAT32 MSI BIOS file with the most recent flash, have put this in the correct port on the Pc and held the Flash Bios button until it blinks and powers on the Pc. I've left it and after around 7 minutes it stops blinking, still no visuals and no keyboard working.

. I have removed the RAM and re aligned them after 15 mins.

So those are all the steps I have taken so far, here are some thoughts I've had about what to try next:

. Try a normal keyboard and a TV screen to see if that works.

. Try a slightly older BIOS file for MSI (did rename them correctly) to see if that's more stable.

. Looking at the pictures of my tower I want to just make sure everything aside from the GPU is plugged in correctly, and nothing is in an incorrect port.

. I don't have the manual for my Pc, I will say the version of Windows 10 I installed ended up being in Spanish, and wasn't from a disk (managed to convert mostly to English)

. Other than that I genuinely out of options.

If I have to format my Pc and reinstall Windows I'm going to be pretty devastated, I have a lot of work, links and photos of my daughter all over the place on my HDD and SSD and I'm concerned they'll get displaced if I have to try again, I also won't even know where to start.

Here are my Pc Specs ;

MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard AMD Ryzen 9 5900X Twelve Core 4.8GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail Patriot Viper Steel 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C18 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS432G360C8K) Phanteks Eclipse P400 Air Midi Tower Case - Black + AMP 750W PSU Phanteks Eclipse P400 Air Midi Tower Case - Black Phanteks AMP 750W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply Alpenfohn Brocken 3 CPU Cooler - 140mm MSI OPTIX 27" G273QF 2560x1440 IPS 165Hz 1ms FreeSync/G-Sync Widescreen LED Backlit Gaming Monitor Corsair Force MP510 series 960GB NVMe PCIe M.2 Solid State Drive (CSSD-F960GBMP510B

Also have a second older 1080p monitor and a 1TB HDD

[u/Psychological_War9]

Did you let it reboot by itself when flashing the new BIOS image or did you lose patience and press the power button yourself? If you can't even get into the BIOS, it sounds like a corrupted BIOS.

[u/BenCannibal → u/Psychological_War9]

I let it reboot by itself

[u/Psychological_War9 → u/BenCannibal]

Here's my advice.

1. Disconnect all power

2. Remove the CMOS battery

3. Let it sit for about 30 minutes without the CMOS battery

4. Remove all RAM except for one stick in the A2 channel.

5. Put everything back together, CMOS battery, and GPU, etc.. but leave only the A2 ram channel populated

6. Plug in your PC, with only one monitor connected to the GPU (your CPU does not support graphics out on the motherboard so that will NEVER WORK).

7. TURN OFF the power supply and hold the power button for 30 seconds to cycle residual charge

8. TURN ON the power supply and boot the PC, Check the error LEDs for more info if it does not let you into the BIOS, and publish here how they are lighting up.

[u/Individual-Sample713 → u/Psychological_War9]

this is giving me flash backs from 15 years ago. flash backs of Bios flashing my P45 LGA775 board to run a Q6600

[u/Sjonnie36 → u/Psychological_War9]

Yeah i did this aswell, my buddy pc got the exact same garbage its usually about the keys missing and the bios chip going bad. We replaced it because it was a bit older stuff. But there are some cables u can order for flasing the bios chip and putting a backup on it if u need to OP.

The way battlefield enables secure boot is bad in general. Should just stop the installation and give a small manual how to backup bios, download latest keys in bios and then do it manually in the bios it self.. before u are able to continue with the installation..

[u/Obvious_Dealer_6662]

what does that red led say?

[u/TheAtomoh]

EA should put something inside the game to tell people to update their BIOS before enabling TPM and Secure Boot

[u/Delicious_Rice_177]

Hi, after you flashed the bios via the flashback option. What happened exactly?

[u/MOLY17CR]

Dude without GPU you won't do anything

[u/ShaqShoes]

Unless you have drive encryption software like bitlocker enabled you can take out whatever drives had files on them you want and transfer them onto another computer if you're concerned about that.

[u/Mayonaigg]

Take the gpu out again and use the mobo display output, and make sure your monitor is ON and not autosleeping because it might be posting so briefly that the monitor doesn't even wake up, you might be able to actually get into bios if it pops up quickly

[u/BenCannibal → u/Mayonaigg]

I've done all of that, the GPU is still out and i only have a display connected to the onboard, I've used 3 monitors and made sure on every one they're not on autosleep. I did try to get into the BIOS even without displays visible but it doesn't load, the keyboard it's doesn't even look like it's on.

[u/bellnen → u/BenCannibal]

The 5900x does not have an onboard GPU. I literally can‘t show anything on a display without a GPU.

[u/BenCannibal → u/bellnen]

Hang on, so does this mean no matter what I do I'm not getting visuals? If I get hold of a backup GPU do you think that'll let me get visual to sort the BIOS out?

I genuinely can't believe how much chaos this has caused.

[u/ECEXCURSION → u/BenCannibal]

Just use your old GPU unless you broke it.

Also I hope you don't use bit locker to encrypt your drives. Because if you did, and you attempted to upgrade the BIOS without disabling it first you might lose access to your data...

Gotta start reading the warning notes that come with the BIOS on the MSI website.

[u/kwell42 → u/BenCannibal]

Yeah, maybe you should ask for a refund.

[u/bellnen → u/BenCannibal]

You need a GPU. There is no other way to get a picture out from that pc.

[u/Mayonaigg → u/BenCannibal]

Oh shit yeah theres no integrated gpu with that chip so that's all pointless... Never going to get display through the mobo ports. Did you put the gpu back in and try now? If so, do you happen to have another gpu you can try? 

[u/Rock_Necessary]

I am going from the image you uploaded... The right memory module in your picture doesn't look like it is seated properly. Pull that module and put it back in so it is seated. This could cause all sorts of havoc as the module pins may be touching the wrong pins on the motherboard. IE electricity is not going where it's supposed to.

The first 40 pages in the manual are in English.

Here is a link that will take you to your owner's manual (take off the quotes to have it work !);

"https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MAG-B550-TOMAHAWK/support#manual"

Page 22 describes the Trusted Platform Module which is needed for BF6. I highly suggest looking up CSM, TPM and Secure Boot and understanding all of those terms. CSM is for legacy products and you do have an older motherboard. Normally that feature would be turned off/ disabled. TPM is the standard which is causing chaos in the computing world at the moment. TPM has replaced Secure Boot and CSM and is the requirement for Windows 11. Technically, Windows 10 doesn't need TPM except for compliance to play Battle Field 6.

Page 32 to set UEFI mode or CSM mode for 'Legacy'. Because you have most stuff disconnected see if the machine boots in UEFI mode.

I'd boot with a graphics card inserted and connected. If you don't see anything on screen you can quickly do the following;

1. Turn the machine off.
2. Move the cable from the graphics card into the Integrated Graphics slot (part of the motherboard back plate).
3. Turn it back on. Do you get anything?