My old Z68MA-G45 (B3) started booting only after clearing CMOS and for once!

[pgfior15aa02ed]

Ciao a tutti.
A Z68MA-G45(B3) has worked like a charm since 2012. Weeks ago, the CMOS battery died, and I changed it... And my nightmare started.
To make a long story short, at present, my PC has two reproducible behaviors.

1) It always stacks in a second after the power is on. Blank screen, no sounds, no video signal, no tiny codes at the bottom-right corner (e.g. 99, A3, B4 etc.), no MSI splash screen and, above all, NO access to bios. However, there are life signs as all fans keep running.

2) After a CMOS clearing (usually shorting JBAT1), the BIOS starts and shows the standard msg "F1 to setup - F2 to default and continue".
When I go for "F2", Windows 11 boots and everything works great... Until I reboot the O/S. Then it gets stuck as 1)
When I go for "F1", I can access the bios. However, no matter if I change anything or not, after the reboot, it gets stuck as 1).

I've unmounted both video and audio cards, switched RAM sticks, changed the CMOS battery again... and made many other attempts with no luck.

I've also (re)flashed the bios (even if it's already the latest 20.1, just as a last resort). The forum usd flasher seems worked (despite of a few errors like wmic nor found due to Win11); the usb stick booted and I run the update (in the end it reported like "everything is equal"). Again, no luck. The PC works, but I do need to clear the CMOS again and again :-(
MSIHQ: Information detected by MSIHQ Tool ver: 1.28j
MSIHQ: Report generated in 22/03/2025 at 16:18:26,22
*********************************
Mainboard: Z68MA-G45 (MS-7676)
PCB Version: 3.0
BIOS Version: V20.1 (aka Version: V20.1)
BIOS Date: 01/09/2013
Intel i5-2500T - DDR3 - Enermax 550W - Asus Essence STX audio - Nvidia GeForce 930 - HDD and SDDs

Suggestions are very welcome. I'm stuck and out of idea.
Best
pf

 

[RemusM]

Ciao a tutti.

Buonasera.

A Z68MA-G45(B3) has worked like a charm since 2012. Weeks ago, the CMOS battery died, and I changed it... And my nightmare started.

As general rule: nothing lasts forever.

To make a long story short,

To make the story even shorter, it's time for you to buy a decent PC now in 2025.

Intel i5-2500T

Why do you run Windows 11 with that ancient and crappy CPU?

 

[pgfior15aa02ed]

I see your point ;-)
But I'm stubborn as a mule, and my IT heart can't believe this stuff can work, but only on and off. :-O What happens after the first reboot? Who's spoiling the CMOS?

Said that, I've understood I should start looking for a new mobo.
However, I'd like to reuse the most. DDR3 for example and form factor to reuse the case. Have you any tips at large?

p.s. Win11 is another long story I'm not proud of! LOL Ma se vuoi ridere: https://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/comment-page-231/#comment-263164

 

[RemusM]

But I'm stubborn as a mule, and my IT heart can't believe this stuff can work, but only on and off. :-O What happens after the first reboot? Who's spoiling the CMOS?

Said that, I've understood I should start looking for a new mobo.
However, I'd like to reuse the most. DDR3 for example and form factor to reuse the case. Have you any tips at large?

I'm with you.
I still have working (!!!) Spectrum computer (from 1986), working 8088 and a working 80486 DX2
But I don't run Windows 11 on any of them.
Just because you can, it does not mean it's a good idea.
In fact it's a very bad idea to run Windows 11 on unsupported CPUs.
Not only that you have a very slow PC (not suitable for the 2025 apps and games), but what you have is also unsecure and a real errors generator.
Before the Windows 11 release, Microsoft did some extensive testing with hundreds of CPUs.
They spent over 6 months to decide if they will allow Gen 6 and Gen 7 (the famous i7 7700K) for Windows 11 and the final answer was NO.
The main reason was the 5-15% percent of errors in various tests (edge cases).
But for Gen 4 the errors percent was in the 25-35% range.
For your Gen 2 CPU I don't even want to think about ...
Your hardware is simply not good for Windows 11 and the current apps and games.
And your PSU is probably another dead piece of meat ...