After Changing Cmos Battery...

....the DOS screen still comes up "Press F2 to continue". It still says low battery although it is a fresh one.
This is on a Dell 8400 booting to an SATA.
Is there anything that needs to be reset?
TIA

On Sat, 7 Sep 2013 04:37:32 -0700 (PDT), Bob_Villa
wrote:

...the DOS screen still comes up "Press F2 to continue". It still says low battery although it is a fresh one.
This is on a Dell 8400 booting to an SATA.
Is there anything that needs to be reset?
TIA

Did you check the battery?

What is a "Dell 8400"? Does it have a rechargeable battery? Can it be
run without that?

--
TG_1 pwned by FRAUENPOWER
----------------------------------------
http://www.transgallaxys.com/~kanzlerzwo

On Saturday, September 7, 2013 7:37:32 AM UTC-4, Bob_Villa wrote:
...the DOS screen still comes up "Press F2 to continue". It still says low battery although it is a fresh one.

This is on a Dell 8400 booting to an SATA.

Is there anything that needs to be reset?

TIA

That is a little odd. Not sure why. You are sure that the replacement battery is brand-new? The replacement battery is seated in its socket? Is the system still keeping time? Are the PASS and CMOS jumpers set correctly? If the CMOS jumper is set to clear the CMOS, this would explain the press F2 message.

ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-produ...nual_zh-cn.pdf

Move the CMOS jumper to the clear position, power up, power down, set the CMOS jumper again, then verify that all the CMOS settings are reasonable. This may correct the problem, if one or more CMOS settings are corrupted or the CMOS checksum does not compute. With SATA, pay attention to the BIOS setting for AHCI or legacy. If the system blue screens, change this setting..

A long time ago, in the last century, back when a Pentium-without-numbers-or-suffix was king, the CMOS on Pentium motherboards eventually wore out because of the stupidity of Microsoft Windows 95/98 in updating the CMOS with every reboot, whether or not the contents of CMOS actually changed. (Think about it. Why rewrite CMOS contents that have not changed.) These additional CMOS write cycles eventually wore out the CMOS. I have not seen this in at least 10 years, but it could also be the case now with a 9-year old computer. I do not know how to test for it, either.

Microsoft and Intel together designed extensions to the original IBM AT CMOS, and the extensions now contain all the plug-and-play configuration data.... Ben Myers

On Saturday, September 7, 2013 6:05:39 PM UTC-4, Happy Oyster wrote:
On Sat, 7 Sep 2013 04:37:32 -0700 (PDT), Bob_Villa

wrote:



...the DOS screen still comes up "Press F2 to continue". It still says low battery although it is a fresh one.

This is on a Dell 8400 booting to an SATA.

Is there anything that needs to be reset?

TIA



Did you check the battery?



What is a "Dell 8400"? Does it have a rechargeable battery? Can it be

run without that?



--

TG_1 pwned by FRAUENPOWER

----------------------------------------

http://www.transgallaxys.com/~kanzlerzwo

The Dimension 8400 is a big honking tower... Ben Myers

On Sunday, September 8, 2013 1:39:08 AM UTC-5, Ben Myers wrote:
On Saturday, September 7, 2013 7:37:32 AM UTC-4, Bob_Villa wrote:

...the DOS screen still comes up "Press F2 to continue". It still says low battery although it is a fresh one.



This is on a Dell 8400 booting to an SATA.



Is there anything that needs to be reset?



TIA



That is a little odd. Not sure why. You are sure that the replacement battery is brand-new? The replacement battery is seated in its socket? Is the system still keeping time? Are the PASS and CMOS jumpers set correctly? If the CMOS jumper is set to clear the CMOS, this would explain the press F2 message.


As always, thanks Ben ;^)...this was a new sealed battery. This is my futzin rig so I never bothered to check the battery with a meter.
It never lost the clock setting it just stated it was low when booted.

I apologize for my stupidity...the defaults had it looking for the floppy drive which it doesn't have!
All is well, operator error and senior moment!

On Sunday, September 8, 2013 2:23:12 PM UTC-4, Bob_Villa wrote:
I apologize for my stupidity...the defaults had it looking for the floppy drive which it doesn't have!

All is well, operator error and senior moment!

Ah, yes. When a battery is replaced in most systems, the BIOS realizes that the CMOS is corrupted and (nowadays) resets everything to defaultss. With the older Dimensions, the CMOS default is a floppy diskette drive present.. Make it easy on yourself and install a floppy drive. They are very handy.

What is absolutely nuts though, is Microsoft's insistence on reading supplementary drivers from floppy when you hit F6 duirng the initial phase of a Windows install.

All's well that ends well... Ben