Bios reset

[Dogtown]

hey all its me again, a few weeks ago i had to pull the battery out of my computer because it would not boot. Lately i have had to do this every other day or so ....whats happening here ?? any help would be great .

[100Coogn]

hey all its me again, a few weeks ago i had to pull the battery out of my computer because it would not boot. Lately i have had to do this every other day or so ....whats happening here ?? any help would be great .

Only time I've had to do that was due to a bad RAM module.
Installed new RAM and all was good.

Coogan

[Bizman]

Battery? You're talking about a laptop, aren't you?

I've encountered several types of issues caused by a failing laptop battery, one of the strangest being the total loss of anything networking related including NIC's.

Take the battery out and use mains only for some time to see if that normalizes the situation.

Or are you talking about the bios battery, the small button cell? If it is failing, some modern systems won't boot at all. If in doubt, replace it and reset your bios to "optimized settings" or to your personal ones.

[Dogtown]

Hey Biz, I had a desktop computer built for me about 6-8 months ago, one day it would not come on , i took the bios battery out for a while and after putting it back in my computer it started . I guess this is a common problem and fix. But this week i have had to do the same thing every few days because the computer will not boot..it powers up but will not boot..i can tell when it boots because of the noise it makes ..u know ? It has done this 3 times this week. I shut off and on a few times before i finally pull the battery again..these last few times while turning it on and off the light would come on but the fans would not turn. I assume this is a new battery i have in it , but are you saying a weak or dead battery will do this ? 

[Dogtown]

Hey Coogan, ty for the reply but this is new ram in it so i hope that aint it

[Bizman]

Hey Dogtown,

Yes, a weak or failing bios battery can cause issues you've described. Getting a new one doesn't cost much, roughly the same as the coin of the same size. Defective ones can exist, you know...

Another thing is, since your computer is new you're probably running Windows 10. The Fast Startup feature can also be the culprit, you might want to disable that: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4189-fast-startup-turn-off-windows-10-a.html.

[Dogtown]

right on ...start with the cheap stuff first , right ?  yes windows 10 ...will do. and as always ty very much for the help !

[Bizman]

You're welcome.

Actually, since you probably don't have a CR2032 cell at hand, disable the Fast Startup feature and see if your problem is solved with that. Getting a spare battery won't ruin your budget so get that too, so you can change it if the settings change didn't do the trick.

[Dogtown]

ok i disabled fast start but it seems that my hibernate setting was already disabled and from what i read that would of already had fast start disabled ?

[Bizman]

I read that too. So it seems you're off to do some battery shopping.

Yet a possibility, although far fetched: Some motherboards have a jumper for resetting the bios. Way back I reset mine and for some odd reason I figured there were three pins instead of two. So I thought I had the middle and right ones connected for normal use when in reality the jumper was hanging on one pin only. It took me some weeks to figure out why the computer always asked me to check the settings during startup...

[Rich46yo]

Hey Coogan, ty for the reply but this is new ram in it so i hope that aint it

Did the problem start when you put the new RAM in? Computers can be finicky about what kind of RAM they like and what slots they are put in. Thats why I always replace/increase RAM with the exact type that came with it and put it into the same slots. A lot of MBs have an order of RAM slot positions you have to follow.

[Dogtown]

ok ya i have a new battery now and will put that in soon...The ram has been in the computer since the build 6-8 moths ago Rich46 so idk.  the first time it would not boot i reset the bios and after my fans ran at full speed (i posted a question about that about a month ago) I was able to go into bios and switch the fans to auto with help from u all. Now the last few times i had to reset the bios the fans would go back to full speed and i would switch them back to auto. I have not done that on this reset..i am just shutting the computer off when im not using it and have not have any trouble with it booting...idk if that has anything to do with it though.  This last time the computer shut down while i was on it and would not boot back up which i thought strange because the times before it would not boot after being i guess in sleep mode ? Any way I will change the battery tonight and get back with u all . Thank you

[Dogtown]

hey .. after putting the new battery in and starting the computer , i think i seen where it said CMOS <fail> press del to enter set up...i never noticed the CMOS fail part before ...whats that about ?

[Chalenge]

Just go into the BIOS and make one change (date or time should work), and then back as it is and everything should be good to go.

[Bizman]

What Chalenge said.

When you change the battery, it resets the bios to fail safe defaults. Actually, if you've taken off the battery for fixes, you should have got that message every time. It's possible that if you've been fast enough there's been some current within the capacitors so the system hasn't been fully reset.