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Name: Janset
Hi all.
My PC is now 4 1/2 years old and the mother board is still running the original battery, the one that is about the size of a 10 cent piece.
My question/s.
How long do these batteries last before they have to be replaced?
What are the signs that the battery needs replacing?
How do you replace the battery without loosing all the BIOS settings?
If the setting do get lost, how do you get them back again?
Regards
Thinking hurts my head that's why I live in West Australia
They can last many years.
Although it will probably run fine with the default setting, If you are worried, you could enter the Bios and copy down or take pictures of all the current settings.
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Forgot to mention the signs of a dying battery. Your clock will start losing time after the system is powered down for a while. You could also start getting CRC errors on the CMOS when you boot.
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Hi ham30.
Yes I have photos and have made copies of the BIOS settings already,(I just need to check if they are still the same and I have changed nothing).
What is CRC and what do you mean exactly when you say"..is powered down for a while". I do not use hibernation nor Standby.
I have set the PC up so when I walk away from the PC, with no activities, the screen blanks out after 2 hours and the HD stops spinning after 3 hours. Don't ask me why I chose those times, they just sounded good :-)
Regards
Thinking hurts my head that's why I live in West Australia
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I've got boards kickin' around here that must be 10 years old, and some of them still have "good" bios batteries.
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CRC = Cylic Redundency Check. It's a method used to try and make sure data of various kinds is still valid. A search on CRC should turn up a complete explanation, which is pretty complicated.
OK, then you are effectively using standby and you probably will never know if your battery is dead or dying, until you have a power failure. The battery is only used when power is removed from the system. That's to keep the clock running and keep the CMOS chip powered.
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Hi again.
So, if the battery is only used to keep the clock running (in case of a power failure for example), with the PC turned off at the tower, but the power still connected, if need be, I should be able to remove and replace the battery without loosing anything?
Is that how it's done?
Regards
Thinking hurts my head that's why I live in West Australia
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absolutely NOT.
If you need to replace that battery...unplug the power cord or take a chance on frying your whole computer.
When you remove the battery all it does is resets the bios to standard factory default settings. Most computers use these settings to begin with so you really don't have a lot to worry about.
If you have an overclocked system then all you will need to do is redo that part and it will be back to where it was set after you adjust the clock and date settings.
Under no cercumstances should you ever leave your computer plugged in to remove a piece of hardware.
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my battery lasted 7 years. The clock started to lose about 2 minutes a day causing a 'time error' to keep popping up. it also affected my yahoo email and made it very slow. I put another battery in and the clock was ok after that.
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