ED#98 : What Happens When The CMOS Battery Fails? - Page 2

Unixlord · 2nd Jul 2008, 08:09 PM

I have an athlon xp system with that problem. But as long as it's connected to the power it won't lose settings. Leaving it off for long periods of time butchered the battery.

iModAMD · 2nd Jul 2008, 10:04 PM

My first computer (an AMD N80L286-12/S) had an soldered battery onboard

bvS · 18th Jul 2008, 08:43 PM

one thing i realized when the battery's dead is that the system won't boot. on my ASUS P5LD2 SE, there's the usual 1 beep, but that's it. the monitor receives no response at all.

Chai · 18th Jul 2008, 09:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bvS

one thing i realized when the battery's dead is that the system won't boot. on my ASUS P5LD2 SE, there's the usual 1 beep, but that's it. the monitor receives no response at all.

Usually it should still work.

Adrian Wong · 21st Jul 2008, 03:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chai

Usually it should still work.

Yeah, it should at least boot up to the main BIOS screen before informing you the BIOS settings are incorrect and you need to change them.

queball · 7th Jan 2009, 05:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adrian Wong

Yeah, it should at least boot up to the main BIOS screen before informing you the BIOS settings are incorrect and you need to change them.

And there you have the follow up article. Which boards will BOOT with a dead CMOS battery.

I can confirm there are lots of motherboards that will not boot with a dead battery. The worst of which give NO indication at all what is wrong. There are some boards where you get no beep, no video, nothing. I bet a ton of motherboards like that have been replaced because people thought the mobo died when all that it needed was a battery.

I can remember my first experience with this was a long time ago back in the 486 days. In my case I was doing cable modem installations for the local cable company back then. I went to this house and the computer was sitting there running when I arrived and everything seemed fine. I had to turn it off to install a network card. Back in those days very few computers had built in network cards. So I unplug it, slap in the card and try to power it up and nothing, computer was dead. The customer was not happy, accused me of breaking the computer etc. So we had to take the computer in to have it repaired. Good thing we found a good computer tech who recognized that it just needed a battery and not an entirely new motherboard. Customer got the computer fixed for free even though the condition turned out to be pre-existing.

Adrian Wong · 9th Jan 2009, 12:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by queball

And there you have the follow up article. Which boards will BOOT with a dead CMOS battery.

I can confirm there are lots of motherboards that will not boot with a dead battery. The worst of which give NO indication at all what is wrong. There are some boards where you get no beep, no video, nothing. I bet a ton of motherboards like that have been replaced because people thought the mobo died when all that it needed was a battery.

I can remember my first experience with this was a long time ago back in the 486 days. In my case I was doing cable modem installations for the local cable company back then. I went to this house and the computer was sitting there running when I arrived and everything seemed fine. I had to turn it off to install a network card. Back in those days very few computers had built in network cards. So I unplug it, slap in the card and try to power it up and nothing, computer was dead. The customer was not happy, accused me of breaking the computer etc. So we had to take the computer in to have it repaired. Good thing we found a good computer tech who recognized that it just needed a battery and not an entirely new motherboard. Customer got the computer fixed for free even though the condition turned out to be pre-existing.

That would really suck. But even back when I had my 386, it would still boot up as the BIOS just resets to its defaults when the battery goes dead. I just have to keep adjusting the BIOS settings everytime I cold boot it.

mathew7 · 16th Feb 2009, 04:09 PM

I've had issues with some "Tomato" brand boards that I've had to change the battery yearly. Boards were ATX hooked to ATX PSUs which were always connected to AC. The systems were used 8-12 hours/day, 6days/week.
The users just kept calling me that the system gives errors on start-up. The 1st time I had this problem, I updated BIOS setting and everything was ok...until the next morning. Only the 3rd morning I actually tried to change the battery, because I never expected a 1-year-old system to drain the battery.

Adrian Wong · 17th Feb 2009, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mathew7

I've had issues with some "Tomato" brand boards that I've had to change the battery yearly. Boards were ATX hooked to ATX PSUs which were always connected to AC. The systems were used 8-12 hours/day, 6days/week.
The users just kept calling me that the system gives errors on start-up. The 1st time I had this problem, I updated BIOS setting and everything was ok...until the next morning. Only the 3rd morning I actually tried to change the battery, because I never expected a 1-year-old system to drain the battery.

Wow, that's a really short livespan. Usually the battery would last a few years since it's trickle charged as long as there is power to the PSU.

2nd Jul 2008, 08:09 PM	#11 (permalink)
Unixlord I'm a regular Join Date: 26 Jun 2008 Posts: 301 Reputation: 98 Rep Power: 2	I have an athlon xp system with that problem. But as long as it's connected to the power it won't lose settings. Leaving it off for long periods of time butchered the battery. __________________ Intel E8400 @ 3.6GHz 1.23v load + Zerotherm Zen FZ120 \| ASUS Rampage Formula \| G.Skill PI Black 2x2GB \| Gainward GeForce 8800GT 700/1000/1750 + Zalman VF1000 \| PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W \| Thermaltake Armor VA8003SWA

2nd Jul 2008, 10:04 PM	#12 (permalink)
iModAMD Warming up Join Date: 14 Apr 2008 Location: Montr?al,Qu?bec,Canada Posts: 147 Reputation: 71 Rep Power: 2	My first computer (an AMD N80L286-12/S) had an soldered battery onboard __________________ ---Stealth-Box--- Case: Antec Sonata 3 / Mobo: Gigabyte MA790FX-DQ6 / CPU : AMD ATHLON X2 6000+ w/t Zalman 9700 / GPU : ATI 4850 / Ram: (4X2GB) OCZ AM2 Optimised DDR2-667 / PSU: Antec EarthWatts 500W / HDDs:4X Western Digital 250GB 2500 AAKS SATA2 (RAID 0) / Mouse:Logitech MX1000 / Keyboard: Logitech G11 / Speakers: Altec Lansing Satelite 300.1 (2.1) + Creative CS 120 (2.0) Last edited by iModAMD : 3rd Jul 2008 at 05:48 AM.

16th Feb 2009, 04:09 PM	#18 (permalink)
mathew7 Newbie Join Date: 25 Dec 2005 Location: Romania, Timisoara Posts: 3 Reputation: 0 Rep Power: 0	Yearly battery changes I've had issues with some "Tomato" brand boards that I've had to change the battery yearly. Boards were ATX hooked to ATX PSUs which were always connected to AC. The systems were used 8-12 hours/day, 6days/week. The users just kept calling me that the system gives errors on start-up. The 1st time I had this problem, I updated BIOS setting and everything was ok...until the next morning. Only the 3rd morning I actually tried to change the battery, because I never expected a 1-year-old system to drain the battery.

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18th Jul 2008, 08:43 PM	#13 (permalink)
bvS Newbie Join Date: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 1 Reputation: 0 Rep Power: 0	one thing i realized when the battery's dead is that the system won't boot. on my ASUS P5LD2 SE, there's the usual 1 beep, but that's it. the monitor receives no response at all.