How To "Recover" the BIOS When The Screen Is Black

[mrg_50_68]

Hello,

I was experimenting with a 2nd video card on my recently purchased Z420.    The video card was acting flaky so I went into the BIOS, and changed only one setting that pertained to "Video".    Of course I stupidly saved it.

Now, the computer beeps 6 times (hinting at the video issue), but never shows the screen.    I went back to the original Video Card, with no different results.   

I'm told I should be able to "flash" the bios, which I agree.   However, with the screens unusable, then I need to create a bootable flash drive.    I have a flash drive with nothing on it.   

If I use "run" on the .exe, it never gives me the option to create a bootable USB Drive.

So I am either doing something wrong, on the bios download, or stupidly I am going about this the wrong way altogether (maybe I should not flash the bios).   I read some posts about clearing the CMOS but am hesitant to do so, because it either works, or completely screws up the motherboard.

Any other ideas?

[Lil_Boy_Blue]

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c02693833

[DGroves]

by chance was that "one" option the compute one? in other words did you enable the compute option for that pci-e slot?

if you did and did not do it to any other slots you can recover by inserting a video card in any other slot

if you changed it in all pci-e slots, then you are up the creek so to speak, until/unless someone writes up how to blindly press the nessary keys on the keyboard to reset the compute option

doing a bios reset/cmos reset will not help as this setting persists and can only be changed back by manually changing the bios option

you have also learned a major lesson, don't play/change settings or jumpers you do not fully understand,......take the time to read up and learn what they do first

i have comented on what the compute option in the z series workstation does several times, use this forums search function to locate the posts

if not a compute option setting, then a cmos reset may resolve your problems. i strongly advise not to try a bios flash while you do not have a visable display since a bad or incomplete bios update will leave you with another issue namely a corupted bios besides the display issue

[mrg_50_68]

I was fortunate enough that pulling the CMOS battery took care of the issue.

I am up and running again.

Thanks for all the help.