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My sister has an i5 3500 (?) on some gigabyte board with 4 sticks of 4GB RAM. It's been working fine until this morning when it was stuck on the BIOS splash screen. She said she left it on overnight and told me it did a Windows 10 update overnight.

At the BIOS screen "delete" won't go into the setup, and none of the other options (F12 for bootup options) work. The keyboard is registering because ctrl alt delete does reboot the machine. I pulled all the RAM out and tried each stick 1 at a time, no luck.

I'm thinking a hardware issue? Maybe the mobo? Thanks!

Sounds like it's time for the usual check of loose connectors. Externally, start by disconnecting all USB peripherals except the keyboard and see if it boots; sometimes a faulty USB peripheral can cause strange behavior. Then disconnect everything except the power cord, one monitor, and keyboard, and try again.

If that isn't it, the next step is to disconnect everything from the motherboard (as in, EVERYTHING, except the CPU) and let it sit for a few hours, then reconnect only a minimum bootable RAM, power supply, keyboard, and video configuration (use integrated video if available). Use the reset jumper to clear the motherboard BIOS, then try to boot. If that still doesn't do the trick then you probably have a dead motherboard.

Make sure there isn't a thumbdrive plugged in to any of the USB ports.

Thank you guys for help! Ludi, it looks like resetting the BIOS by pulling the battery (mobo still uses jumpers) did the trick!

soccergenius wrote:

Thank you guys for help! Ludi, it looks like resetting the BIOS by pulling the battery (mobo still uses jumpers) did the trick!

Great! Keep an eye on it though. Sometimes a problem like this is an early indicator of deeper trouble beginning to appear in the PC.

ludi wrote:

soccergenius wrote:

Thank you guys for help! Ludi, it looks like resetting the BIOS by pulling the battery (mobo still uses jumpers) did the trick!

Great! Keep an eye on it though. Sometimes a problem like this is an early indicator of deeper trouble beginning to appear in the PC.

And sometimes, at the very least, that battery needs to be replaced. They're not rechargable, and they don't last forever.

UberGerbil wrote:

ludi wrote:

soccergenius wrote:

Thank you guys for help! Ludi, it looks like resetting the BIOS by pulling the battery (mobo still uses jumpers) did the trick!

Great! Keep an eye on it though. Sometimes a problem like this is an early indicator of deeper trouble beginning to appear in the PC.

And sometimes, at the very least, that battery needs to be replaced. They're not rechargable, and they don't last forever.

Yeah, and that system is likely old enough that a dead CMOS battery is a definite possibility, if not probable. They're typically good for about 5 years IME, but I've seen them fail in as little as 3.