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BIOS battery query

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8 replies

by outamyhead

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I have had a customer in today regarding his computer that I looked at over a month ago when the computer would not boot even after pulling out every device I could not get an error beep or any sign of life, well he came back and said that a friend of his fixed the problem by replacing the BIOS battery!?

I have seen a few things since being a technician but this is a first for me and for all the other guys they have never heard of a battery preventing a computer booting, showing a display oreven signalling beep errors.

Has anyone heard of a problem like this?

8 replies

by opatzg9

Nope, have you ever tried booting without any battery at all? Just curious how that would turn out. I've had a number of battery failures before but it only seemed to affect system time and initial setups. It never stopped the computer from running. What kind of a motherboard was in that one?

by thechas

Yep, I seen this in 3 specific situations:

1. BIOS was flashed. CMOS often needs to be reset after flashing the BIOS, replacing the battery can have the same effect as running the CMOS reset procedure.

2. Weak battery. A weak battery can cause the logic levels to be at an 'indeterminate' state. The logic levels from the CMOS can be in between a logic 1 and 0. This can cause the BIOS to lock the first time it looks for a value from the CMOS.

3. Socket A SDRAM motherboards. I have seen several socket A SDRAM motherboards that set the wrong CPU FSB and multiplier. For whatever reason, this can cause both boot and shutdown problems.

Chas

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