KenW wrote:
On Thu, 22 Oct 2020 10:07:15 -0400, bad sector
wrote:

Having 'increasing' probs with my 8-core AMD destktop.
The board is an asus-xhair-IV

Boot often doesn't even begin and pops the subject
error message which includes "or F.. to load defaults"
and words of this nature.

CPU temps never above 50c.

BIOS should come up by touching "Del" but it takes a dozen
attempts for that to work with my new usb gaming keyboard.

This morning bios just would not detect 2 of my data drives
in sata slots 3 & 4 (using a 5-bay rack with 1-4 sata reserved).

After I don't know how many reboots bios still wasn't detecting
but "fdisk -l" finally picked one of them up.

On the last boot bios detected it too, got it mounted, and
it's presently taking 1tb of backups.

I would just like some ballpark hunches to start with, what
do symptoms like this suggest? Mobo, rack, bios?

Battery cr-2032 could be going bad (low voltage)


KenW

Making note of any special settings, before replacement.
As you'd have to put back the settings afterwards.

Sometimes taking digital camera pictures of the BIOS
screen in advance, is a good enough method.

Some Asus motherboards are famous for their bad
defaults choices in the BIOS, requiring things to be
corrected over and over again.

Later Asus boards have a "profile manager" and you can
load a saved profile after a battery replacement. My
newest system has that feature, and I have two profiles
saved in it. The interface in the BIOS screen for that,
is less than intuitive (you can't tell what you're
supposed to do).

If you have a multimeter, you can take a voltage
reading off the top of the CR2032, using any I/O mounting
screw as an alligator-clip ground. If 2.3V or less, replace.
When brand new, they can be in the 3.1V range.

If you unplug a computer with brand new battery, and
leave it in the junk room, the battery lasts for three years.

Paul