From bad to worse: A repair goes awry

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LANGALIST By Fred Langa Sometimes, well-intentioned repairs can actually make things worse than before. That’s what happened to a reader who was tryin
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abbodi86

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This maybe something from old school, but don’t you have to re-make some settings (Bios?) after removing or replacing the Motherboard battery?

Windows 11 Pro v24H2 and Windows 10 Pro x64 v22H2

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Did some more research, the battery powers the CMOS which keeps various elements of the BIOS/UEFI alive.  Some fixes require removal of the CMOS battery in order to reset the BIOS/UEFI.

Perhaps Fred can discuss further.

Windows 11 Pro v24H2 and Windows 10 Pro x64 v22H2

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Does the computer give you a warning that the battery is dead, or do you have to guess?

Chris
Win 10 Pro x64 Group A

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I’ve never seen it give an error message when it was dying, but I haven’t had one die on a PC that is anything close to new! You’ll notice it when the realtime clock resets to its baseline date each time you turn the computer off. The UEFI settings should be stored in NVRAM and should not be dependent on the battery to keep alive in a modern system.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Chris B

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Whether the battery informs about being low depends on the computer.

• At boot the computer may halt and tell that the time and date settings are wrong and ask you to either go to the BIOS or press F1 or some other key to continue
• I recall having seen a “CMOS battery low” message sometimes with or without the above
• Some computers may refuse to boot when the battery is dead! And I mean they really don’t start, no life at all! I’ve seen that several times and if memory serves me right the computers involved have been about from 2010 or a bit younger, made by Fujitsu and/or having an Asus motherboard.

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Thanks @Ascaris On that basis, I don’t think my battery died on my last PC, replaced at 8 years old.

Chris
Win 10 Pro x64 Group A

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Thanks Fred for knocking it out of the park in your May 10^th article about the BIOS battery. My almost 7 year old Dell 8100 started taking forever to boot after a shutdown several months ago.  I did all the usual things to resolve this (forums, msconfig, startup, SFC/scan, autoruns, etc., etc.).  Solution, go get a cup of java while the system crawls through its bootup.

Then flash, your article.  The BIOS battery never even crossed this old geeks mind and I have worked with computers since Univac II (1965).  Dementia creeping in me thinks.  Anyway, installed a new battery and whamo no more forever bootup.  Another jewel Fred.  Thanks.

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