Cant access BIOS after install

[Jovin]

Hi All
I have an old Toshiba Satellite C650-194 which I have breathed new life into with a recent install of Q4OS Centaurus Trinity however it now seems to have completely taken over to such an extent that I cant access the BIOS (usually F2) or boot device menu (F12). No key presses apart from Esc are recognized at boot and the Toshiba logo splash screen has also gone and the machine goes straight to Q4OS boot. When pressing Esc it goes to a GRUB boot menu with the option of normal boot or recovery mode.

I have removed the HDD and tried to boot with a bootable USB key but this is not recognized even tho the BIOS was previously set to USB as the first boot device and I have tried with no boot media but just get a blank screen with flashing cursor and no key presses whatsoever are recognized.

Any suggestions on what has happened and how to recover greatly appreciated. Bear in mind I am new to Linux although have previously been a pc hardware repair engineer for the last 15 years or so.

Currently getting very frustrated and beginning to despise the words "Loading Q4OS....."

Many thanks
John

 

[Brickwizard]

Toshiba Satellite C650-194

Welcome to the forums.. this may [or not ] work
shut down the system. press F2 while the power is actually off. push power button while holding down F2 at same time.
some systems dont give you much time [my HP only gives a couple of seconds]

Bwiz

 

[Jovin]

Welcome to the forums.. this may [or not ] work
shut down the system. press F2 while the power is actually off. push power button while holding down F2 at same time.
some systems dont give you much time [my HP only gives a couple of seconds]

Bwiz

Thanks for the reply and the welcome.

Yep F2 is the one and have tried holding it down prior to the power switch but only results in a lot of indignant beeping and flashing cursor. On release, when the beeping stops, are the now dreaded words "loading Q4OS...." Have also been as quick as you like in pressing F2 after power all to no avail.

 

[f33dm3bits]

When booting and need to enter the bios/uefi I usually tend to spam all possible F-keys during boot so F2, F9, F10 and F12. Seems with the last grub I have gotten a boot entry in my menu to directly boot into to the bios/uefi.

 

[Deleted member 108694]

try tapping the F2 key repeatedly when it starts to boot not hold it down

 

[Jovin]

try tapping the F2 key repeatedly when it starts to boot not hold it down

Yes that would be how I would expect to get into BIOS on this machine and as an engineer I've done it thousands of times on thousands of machines but not it would seem on this thing....

 

[Deleted member 108694]

Yes that would be how I would expect to get into BIOS on this machine and as an engineer I've done it thousands of times on thousands of machines but not it would seem on this thing....

Maybe the bios is corrupt have you tried to reflash it? also what kernel is Q4OS running - Also is it UEFI or Legacy boot

 

[stan]

When pressing Esc it goes to a GRUB boot menu with the option of normal boot or recovery mode.

Seems with the last grub I have gotten a boot entry in my menu to directly boot into to the bios/uefi.

Have you looked into that "recovery mode?" Just wondering if it might have a BIOS option such as @f33dm3bits described? Or perhaps some other things to try?

Another wild guess to try is to remove laptop battery and AC power, then access and remove the BIOS battery. Leave it out for good while to be sure all voltages drain and memories are cleared. You might try to boot it while the BIOS battery is out, if it's not a lot of trouble. I'd also check the BIOS battery voltage, and replace it if less than 3V. Put it all back together and say a quick prayer to the electron gods. If that happened to work, all your BIOS settings would be back to default and should be reviewed. (Of course you already know that with your hardware experience.)

[EDIT]
Okay, another wild guess that might help. Looking up your laptop, the web indicates it originally came with Windows 7, and that it has a built-in DVD drive. If it came out late in Win 7 production (and was "Windows 8 Ready") then the system firmware would be UEFI instead of the older BIOS firmware. Not that we need to figure that out, but it could be a source of the trouble. So the thought is that you might try to burn a Linux DVD and try to boot on that instead of USB. I wouldn't waste too many DVD's.... but I also might try more than one if the first one doesn't work, using different distros (Fedora, Linux Mint, Manjaro are all from different Linux families). I might would try 32-bit distros even though it seems your laptop is 64-bit (32-bit should still work). The point here is that whether BIOS or UEFI, it is most common for a CD/DVD drive to have priority in the boot sequence. If you can get anything to boot.... install it. With luck, this problem might disappear with Q4OS.

Don't forget that you need to "burn image" or "write image" to get the Linux ISO file properly burned to a DVD so it will be bootable. Brasero and Xfburn are both good programs for making Linux DVD's.

 

[Deleted member 108694]

Just remembered some of the older Toshiba machines used the Esc key to access BIOS