I've been messing around with an old mini PC I got from work, mainly to try and set it up for Home Assistant. I turned on UEFI and disabled secure boot as part of the setup. After rebooting, I suddenly can't access the BIOS or the operating system at all. It just shows a black screen when I try to boot it up. The fans are running, the power light is on, and I hear a couple of beeps from the internal speaker, but I can't find much info on what those mean for this Lenovo model from 2012. I've attempted to boot from various devices, like a USB drive with Ubuntu and an SSD, but nothing works. I even swapped out the CMOS battery in case that was causing the issue. I really need help getting this system back up and running! If I can access the BIOS, I might be able to fix it from there. Otherwise, I may just have to consider it a lost cause.
2 Answers
One thing you can try is to disconnect the hard drive and see if it allows you to access UEFI. Sometimes, the absence of a hard drive can prompt the BIOS screen. After you get into UEFI, remember to save changes before plugging the hard drive back in and see if that resolves the black screen issue.
You might want to try shorting specific pins on the motherboard to reset the BIOS to factory settings. This can sometimes clear any issues caused by incorrect BIOS settings. Here’s a link showing where the pins are located. Just be careful doing this!
I found the area and shorted those pins, but unfortunately, nothing changed. Still only getting a black screen.
I tried that too—still just a black screen whether the hard drive is connected or not.