Z170 ITX Instant Flash Snafu

swingarm wrote: I guess me doing a bios update(rebooting with the instant update extracted file on the usb drive) and the motherboard not booting is just a coincidence, maybe my board just picked that time to bork itself. Thanks for the info on the battery. After the first post I tried unplugging the CMOS battery, tried a different monitor, different video ports on the motherboard, and messing with the ram.  Guess only thing that's left is removing the motherboard, removing the Samsung drive, and seeing if it will boot.  If it still won't boot maybe time for a RMA.

Any chance that Windows 10 did one of its annoying "Restart and Update" changes? I've been seeing a lot of those lately. That's a stretch honestly, but you never know. It sounds like you cannot start the Windows 10 installation media, or anything else on your PC.

I assure you that Instant Flash does not start on its own, it must be started manually, and you must select the UEFI file to be used, even if only one is on the USB flash drive.

I have an ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ board, and recently used Instant Flash to install my board's 7.10 UEFI. The behavior of Instant Flash is identical on your board.

It is a major coincidence that this problem happened just as you meant to use Instant Flash. But if you never had any display to the monitor, there is no way you could start Instant Flash.

swingarm wrote: First my specs:   ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac Motherboard Intel 6700K CPU Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB Kit (8GBx2) 2400 MT/s UDIMM DDR4-2400 Ram Samsung 950 Pro 512GB M.2 SSD Seagate 2.5" 750GB HDD Seagate 2.5" 120GB HDD Windows 10 Pro SilverStone 600W SX600-G SFX Power Supply Caselabs Bullet BH2 Case Not Overclocked Today I saw that a new bios for this motherboard was out so I decided to use Instant Flash.  I put the file on an empty 64GB USB Drive and rebooted, no video or beeps even after waiting several minutes.  Rebooted without the USB Drive and still nothing.  Cleared CMOS and still nothing.  Put the file on a 256MB USB Drive and still nothing.  Used a different USB port and still nothing.   Tried using a DOS USB boot drive and still nothing.  I would remove the CMOS battery but there isn't one.  The above specs worked just fine before I attempted this.  Did the bios somehow get corrupted and what else can I do to try to recover?

Given your description, you did not run Instant Flash at all.

Instant Flash can be run from the UEFI. Tools screen, or selected when the ASRock screen is displayed when the PC starts.

Instant Flash does not start automatically simply because you inserted a USB flash drive in the PC with the UEFI file in it.

You downloaded the Instant Flash UEFI update file to a PC. The file is a .zip file, which must have it's contents extracted. The resulting Instant Flash file is Z17GXA_7.10, 16,384KB in size.

On the Instant Flash UEFI download entry, there is a How to Update link, that describes the process in general:

http://www.asrock.com/support/BIOSUI.asp?cat=BIOS8

The extracted UEFI file is then copied to a USB flash drive, and inserted into a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port (since you use Win 10) on the board's IO panel.

I normally then restart the PC into the UEFI, go to the Tools screen, and select Instant Flash.

Instant Flash scans for compatible UEFI files, and will list them in a small box on the screen, if you have more than one UEFI file on the flash drive. You then select the UEFI, and click Update. You will be prompted once to insure you want to proceed. You click Ok to begin the Instant Flash process.

At first, you will see "Crashless Feature...", and a progress bar. Crashless is a safety feature used if the PC crashes during the UEFI update. I've updated the UEFIs of my many ASRock boards, many times, and have never had a crash or failure using Instant Flash, but it's nice to have this feature.

After that the actual UEFI update will begin, and another progress bar will be displayed. When complete, you will be prompted to press Enter to restart the PC. That's it.

After any UEFI/BIOS update, all the options will be set back to their default settings. Any saved user UEFI profiles will be removed. You will need to manually restore any essential option settings you use. Yes it is a pain that the profiles are removed. Before a UEFI update, you can insert a USB flash drive in the board's IO panel, go into the UEFI, and on all screens, if you press the F12 function key, an image of what is shown on the monitor will be saved to the USB flash drive.

I have no idea what happened when you inserted that USB flash drive. If your description is accurate, an Instant Flash UEFI update never occurred. It seems something coincidentally failed in the PC or the board itself, when you restarted the PC. There is no reason an Instant Flash .zip file, or an extracted Instant Flash file would cause the PC to fail to start.

If all you did was insert the USB flash drive, that ONLY had the Instant Flash file on it, and did nothing else when you restarted, the PC should have booted into Windows 10.

So unless you have other information you did not put in your original post, it's time to start diagnosing your PC's failure to display any video. You mentioned no POST beep, so POST never completed. Check that the Clear CMOS button is not stuck in the pressed position.

Remove any USB flash drives from the PC. Shutoff the PSU and unplug it for at least a minute. Something failed in your PC that is preventing POST to complete. It seems you are using the Intel integrated graphics, is that correct?

BTW, your board has a battery. It is located on the side of the IO panel connector, that has the optical SPDIF, HDMI, and DisplayPort connectors in it. It is also close to the red heat sink to the left of the CPU socket.