Ok folks, buckle up, this one's a doozy...
First, some background: I upgraded to W11 about 6 weeks ago; however since then, I've found that basic vga drivers won't load (1 long beep, 3 short beeps) which means I can't see to enter the BIOS when the pc boots. The pc does show my sign in screen a few seconds after, so I can sign in to Windows.
So, this morning, I've installed a new m.2 nvme drive in my pc (btw, I had to take out the graphics card to do this). I do that, switch on the pc, hear the beeps as usual and the sign in screen shows soon after. "Hmm," I think to myself, "if I can't see the BIOS, I can't set the new drive to the correct gen. I wonder if booting to safe mode will help."
So, I try to do this through settings but, when the pc restarts, I can't see anything. Windows does it's countdown thing (I presume), and reboots back to normal mode, where I can sign in again. Then I think - wait for it - "What if I boot into safe mode from msconfig?" *selects safe mode, clicks apply, ok, restarts...
And now, as basic VGA drivers won't load, I can't see anything. I've manually turned off the power to the pc, waited a few seconds and rebooted a few times but it must still be trying to boot to safe mode. I can't even boot from my original W10 disk through my optical drive as I can't change the boot order of the drives.
Anyway, I'm stuck for ideas now and on the verge of tearing out what little hair I have left. Anyone got any practical suggestions?