Dying CMOS battery

[tdawg]

Hello,

I am wondering what effects a dying CMOS battery will have on the overall computer. Does it degrade the overall stability of the machine? What else would it do?

I'm running a leadtek 7350kda motherboard and am having some difficulties in getting it stable. Last night on bootup, it said my CMOS battery was low and then the next time I restarted my computer, the BIOS could not find either of my cd devices on the secondary IDE channel. Also, when I was able to get windows XP to load up, it tried to install some nonexistent device as my cd-player. Could the CMOS battery cause all of this? I also had weird colored blocks on the BIOS screen before windows xp took over.

Any help would be appreciated. My system specs are below. Thanks.

tdawg

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Enermax 300w PS (waiting for delivery of Enermax 431w PS)
Athlon XP 1600+ (no O/C)
Leadtek 7350kda mobo
256mb Crucial PC2100 RAM
2x20gb maxtor hdd
Pioneer DVD player
Mitsumi 24x12x40 CDRW
Visiontek Geforce3 Ti200
Hercules Game Theater XP
Linksys 10/100 NIC

 

[Turkey22]

Personally I would replace the board regardless. If you have a bad cmos battery, eventually it's gonna go. I'm sure that a bad cmos can cause some wacky stuff, so I wouldn't be surprised if that is the cause. After you replace your board then I'd go back and make sure that there isn't anything else wrong.

 

[HappyPuppy]

Why in the world would someone need to replace their motherboard just because the CMOS battery is dead. Batteries go dead all the time. There are motherboards that are 15 years old still being used that have had the batteries replaced several times and are still functioning perfectly fine. Brand new motherboards come with bad batteries fairly often and, although it's an inconvenience and aggravating, all you have to do is go to CUSA, BB, Radio Shack or Ma & Pops Corner Computer Shoppe and buy one for a few bucks. Sure, if your board is still under warranty you could RMA it but that would only delay the building of your computer. Before replacing major components you should always look for the little things you can do to get your rig running right.

As for the problems with your compouter. Yes, a bad battery will prevent your BIOS from retaining your settings and it will 'forget' what hardware, like drives, are installed.

Replace the battery first.

 

[MoleX]

Sounds like simialr prob people are having with the ECS K7S5A

coulld be power supply, could be battery, could be Board all together...

need more info

what errors are you getting?

MoleX

 

[veryape]

<< Personally I would replace the board regardless. If you have a bad cmos battery, eventually it's gonna go. I'm sure that a bad cmos can cause some wacky stuff, so I wouldn't be surprised if that is the cause. After you replace your board then I'd go back and make sure that there isn't anything else wrong. >>

I wholeheartedly agree with you my friend.

This morning my car wouldn't start.....damn battery. So I did what I always do when that happens. I went out and bought a brand new one. Yup, got myself a brand new car!!!

 

[veryape]

Oh, btw, a battery will cause all those problems you speak of so I would replace it and i'm pretty certain it will solve your problems.

 

[FlipSide]

the cmos battery ensures that the bios setting you have chosen is not lost when the PC is powered down. basically it becomes anoying when the battery is totally depleted that you have to set you bios every time you start from a cold boot. Save yourself some hassles and replace the battery.