My sad story goes like this (question after “tl;dr end”):
I was trying to have dual boot with Arch Linux and Windows 11 on “ASUS Prime Z790-A WiFi” (manual). Windows wouldn’t install without secure boot (even from pure-FAT32 install USB with no large files, secure boot with no keys also didn’t work).
Last known working setup of BIOS was: “no CMS, Windows UEFI, all keys deleted”. Then I was trying to use sbctl and last working status of that was: “sbctl installed, setup mode enabled, secure boot disabled” – it wasn’t working for me because I have the boot partition separate from the EFI partition, so I decided to manually prepare the keys. I didn’t know why I still had “sbctl installed” after restoring BIOS to defaults, so I assumed it was about OS installation and just purged the package.
Then I manually generated PK, KEK and db sets of files as described here – I just generated them on my system and populated /etc/secureboot, but I didn’t enroll them to the firmware. I just put *.auth, *.esl and *.cer files in EFI/secureboot[/keys] (not sure) to match /etc/secureboot/keys path, but I assumed it’s just arbitrary directory for UEFI. I didn’t remove Default{PK,KEK,db}* files from efivars, just {PK,KEK,db}-* (so loaded keys) and I did it multiple times before.
tl;dr end.
To my surprise, after rebooting I was greeted with blank screen; no ASUS logo, nothing. Now I’m trying to restore BIOS to defaults with no success:
- I downloaded
PRIME-Z790-A-WIFI-ASUS-1820PZ790AW.CAPand put it on FAT32 USB. - I removed CMOS battery for a long time, no power supply.
- I removed my drive for UEFI to not use my EFI partition. Power on, and… nothing. CrashFree BIOS 3 doesn’t trigger.
After POST ctrl+alt+del does something, because my keyboard lights turn off then…
I remember doing all of this like a year ago, I also had a blank screen, but I somehow solved it… additional problem is that my CPU has no discrete GPU, so I’m never sure if the black screen is a reason to panic or not. Anyway, I’m in a loss. 🙁
