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Bad RTC battery on Toshiba laptop

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Original Message
Name: tony
Date: July 2, 2003 at 17:14:27 Pacific
Subject: Bad RTC battery on Toshiba laptop
OS: win 98
CPU/Ram: Pentium
Comment:

My system says "Bad check sum (CMOS). Check system. Bad RTC battery"

I read an April 2003 post that said the RTC is the battery for the CMOS.

What happens if the RTC battery is not changed in time? How do I know if I've already lost all my CMOS information?


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Response Number 1
Name: anonproxy
Date: July 2, 2003 at 20:03:06 Pacific
Reply: (edit)

Your error indicates that data is not consistent in the CMOS. This most likely means the information has changed without your direct input (could be a bad battery, virus, or something unpredicatable). If this is repeated, you should replace the battery or restore the information (if you have no backup, then contact Toshiba).

To check if the CMOS data is correct, enter the CMOS setup from boot. I cannot remember Toshiba's key combination for this. It is one of the traditional function keys(F1, F2, etc.). Consult Toshiba support.

In the modern PC, the CMOS is changed by the OS and is not an authoritative source on configuration data, only an OS independent one. I do not know what Windows will do without it - never thought to experiment honestly.

Here is the Toshiba support homepage.
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_home.jsp

I suggest you talk with Toshiba about the problem (or a certified repair business, who can also give you a quote).

The complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) is essentially an internal memory device (sometimes practically termed CMOS RAM, often by programmers), which uses a battery to maintain its data. On the same integrated circuit is the real-time clock (RTC).

The RTC saves the time in the CMOS. The CMOS/RTC are accessible via the system bus. Their functions are largely for the convenience of the operating system, especially in its early boot stages. An interesting problem with the Y2k craze was that the CMOS/RTC did not properly record century time changes (such as 1999 to 2000), instead, due to limited memory space (traditionally 64k), the RTC rolled the date 2000 to 1900 (called "rollover").


http://www.ust.hk/itsc/y2k/Y2k_pc/RTC_detail.html
http://users.evtek.fi/~hannuvl/ke03/advcprog_cp/exerc12.txt


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