On Tue, 2025-10-28 at 16:43 -0600, home user via users wrote: > The shop from > which I bought the computer gave me a couple of things to try. > 1. The first thing I tried was unplugging the desktop, waiting several > minutes, plugging it back in, powering it back up, and hitting the Del > key repeatedly. All I got were blank screens. > 2. Next I tried turning off the switch at the bottom of the back of the > case, waiting several minutes, turning it back on, powering it back up, > and hitting the Del key repeatedly. That got me into BIOS. I have no > clue as to why this worked, but unplugging did not. The settings were > already as they should have been, except I had to change the boot > order. With this, I was able to re-install Fedora-42 Workstation off > the live media.
I can't imagine why the rear switch would be any different than unplugging it, I've yet to come across a modern PC where the power switch was anything than more than a mains input switch. I had a very old Compaq 486 where its off switch was standby switch in the middle of the power supply. I also can't imagine why it'd need to be switched off for several minutes, it only takes a few seconds to force a hard reset. And you can force a power supply to drain down to zero even quicker by trying to start the PC (the front panel momentary power button) when the mains power is disconnected. If there was enough charge in it to attempt to power up, it will disappear in a flash. My background's in electronics engineering and servicing, by the way. The old turn it off and on again trick often fixes a myriad of things, particularly when equipment has gone haywire after a partial mains power failure, but it rarely requires such a lengthy off time. It may well be luck of the draw that many attempts at hitting the hotkeys finally got you in. With stubborn PCs, there's always the option to disconnect the CMOS battery for a short time (either by removing it, or using some adjacent jumper pins for a disconnect and reset). That'll hard reset things. Then you'll need to go into your BIOS/UEFI and store new settings. With some motherboards it's an option (or maybe an unavoidable behaviour on some) that after turning it off and on again several times, and it doesn't successfully boot, that it will reset something. Mine has an option for that, that will reset some basic defaults in the BIOS/UEFI. An older motherboard had options to revert to prior known working settings if the BIOS couldn't boot after several attempts. Info for next time, or the next person... -- uname -rsvp Linux 3.10.0-1160.119.1.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Jun 4 14:43:51 UTC 2024 x86_64 (yes, this is the output from uname for this PC when I posted) Boilerplate: All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted. I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list. -- _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected] Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
