Some years ago I had an IBM ThinkPad that one day failed to boot, and every subsystem diagnostic that ran at power-up (keyboard, memory, disk controller, ...) reported a problem. On a whim I put in a new clock battery and everything was fine. Now any time a machine suddenly goes flakey, the clock battery is the first thing that gets replaced.
On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 21:22:17 +0930,Tim wrote:
On Thu, 2017-05-25 at 12:47 -0700, Rick Stevens wrote:
Otherwise, with a weak battery the BIOS will usually revert to default settings which are generally considered conservative and "safe".
I'm not so sure that's the case. In many PCs, the BIOS clock, BIOS memory, and perhaps other BIOS hardware, are powered solely by the battery (even when the computer is running off mains power). So, with failing power you could have all manner of random things happen.
On 05/26/2017 10:48 AM, Tom Killian wrote:
Some years ago I had an IBM ThinkPad that one day failed to boot, and every subsystem diagnostic that ran at power-up (keyboard, memory, disk controller, ...) reported a problem. On a whim I put in a new clock battery and everything was fine. Now any time a machine suddenly goes flakey, the clock battery is the first thing that gets replaced.
That's one of the standard things I do during my yearly maintenance of machines (shut down, pull cards, clean contacts, vacuum out dust and other detrius, replace BIOS batteries, replace fans, put it all back together, then go howl at a full moon and hope they boot up again).
On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 21:22:17 +0930,Tim wrote:
On Thu, 2017-05-25 at 12:47 -0700, Rick Stevens wrote: > Otherwise, with a weak battery the BIOS will usually revert to default > settings which are generally considered conservative and "safe". I'm not so sure that's the case. In many PCs, the BIOS clock, BIOS memory, and perhaps other BIOS hardware, are powered solely by the battery (even when the computer is running off mains power). So, with failing power you could have all manner of random things happen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - ...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror - - and you'd be on your own, pal! - ----------------------------------------------------------------------