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c/computer-technicians•keith_martinezkeith_martinez•27d ago

Spent 6 hours on a 'dead' laptop that just had a weird BIOS setting

Customer brought in a machine that wouldn't boot past the logo, and I assumed it was a drive or RAM issue after the usual checks. Turns out the BIOS had somehow enabled a 'fast boot' option that was skipping the USB controller, making it impossible to boot from my diagnostic tools until I found and disabled it. Has anyone else run into a BIOS setting causing a problem that looked like total hardware failure?
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3 Comments
richard_ross
richard_ross27d agoMost Upvoted
Oh man, my buddy had a similar thing happen. His computer kept shutting down like the CPU was overheating, but the cooler was fine. We spent a whole weekend on it before finding some weird BIOS setting called "CPU C-states" that was set wrong. Flipping that off fixed it completely.
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fisher.michael
fisher.michael27d ago
Yeah, C-states don't usually cause shutdowns like that, @richard_ross.
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robinson.leo
robinson.leo25d ago
Wait, so the fast boot was actually hiding the USB controller from the boot menu? That's wild. Did you have to clear the CMOS to even get into the BIOS, or could you still hit the key during startup?
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