If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
need to replace battery- do I need to write down everything in sys. setup?
Gee, my 8 year old Dell is finally losing its battery. I now get a warning
when booting up- (forgot to write it down exactly) warning about battery failure. So, I bought a new battery- but I just noticed that the manual says I need to write down everything in Setup. Is that really necessary? One friend suggested that if I make a restore point before the replacement- it should contain that info, but I'm not so sure of that. So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that a PC should be able to do this itself! Joe |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
need to replace battery- do I need to write down everything in sys. setup?
Assuming that you're talking about the lithium "coin" battery that powers
the ROM while the PC is shut down, the capacitors *should* keep enough voltage on the ROM to give you enough time to remove the old battery and insert the new one. But if the capacitor(s) is(are) leaky, you'll lose the BIOS settings when the old battery is removed, so you should write those down just in case. If you're curious or energetic enough to perform an experiment, try removing the old battery and wiping its metal surface and the metal contact surface of the holding clip with an abrasive paper towel - enough to make the metal shiny again - and then pop it back in the holding clip. (If you have a can of spray-on contact cleaner, that will help, too. Just spray it on and wipe the metal surface clean.) The warning message may not appear, indicating that you'll probably get another few months or couple years out of the old battery. *TimDaniels* "Joe" wrote: Gee, my 8 year old Dell is finally losing its battery. I now get a warning when booting up- (forgot to write it down exactly) warning about battery failure. So, I bought a new battery- but I just noticed that the manual says I need to write down everything in Setup. Is that really necessary? One friend suggested that if I make a restore point before the replacement- it should contain that info, but I'm not so sure of that. So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that a PC should be able to do this itself! Joe |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
need to replace battery- do I need to write down everything insys. setup?
On 7/29/2010 12:53 PM, Timothy Daniels wrote:
Assuming that you're talking about the lithium "coin" battery that powers the ROM while the PC is shut down, the capacitors *should* keep enough voltage on the ROM to give you enough time to remove the old battery and insert the new one. But if the capacitor(s) is(are) leaky, you'll lose the BIOS settings when the old battery is removed, so you should write those down just in case. If you're curious or energetic enough to perform an experiment, try removing the old battery and wiping its metal surface and the metal contact surface of the holding clip with an abrasive paper towel - enough to make the metal shiny again - and then pop it back in the holding clip. (If you have a can of spray-on contact cleaner, that will help, too. Just spray it on and wipe the metal surface clean.) The warning message may not appear, indicating that you'll probably get another few months or couple years out of the old battery. *TimDaniels* "Joe" wrote: Gee, my 8 year old Dell is finally losing its battery. I now get a warning when booting up- (forgot to write it down exactly) warning about battery failure. So, I bought a new battery- but I just noticed that the manual says I need to write down everything in Setup. Is that really necessary? One friend suggested that if I make a restore point before the replacement- it should contain that info, but I'm not so sure of that. So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that a PC should be able to do this itself! Joe That was a great post. Thanks, Tim. I think I'll resurrect my ancient Dell XPS M200s (which has been sleeping in my closet for about 9 years.) -- Daddy |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
need to replace battery- do I need to write down everything in sys. setup?
As a general rule the BIOS will work at it's normal defaults if you never
customized any settings, so it shouldn't be necessary to write them down. In all likelihood, since you've gotten the warning, the system has already lost settings and used defaults on startup. A restore point is completely irrelevant to the BIOS. .. "Joe" wrote in message ... Gee, my 8 year old Dell is finally losing its battery. I now get a warning when booting up- (forgot to write it down exactly) warning about battery failure. So, I bought a new battery- but I just noticed that the manual says I need to write down everything in Setup. Is that really necessary? One friend suggested that if I make a restore point before the replacement- it should contain that info, but I'm not so sure of that. So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that a PC should be able to do this itself! Joe |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
need to replace battery- do I need to write down everything insys. setup?
On 7/29/2010 10:53 AM, Joe wrote:
Gee, my 8 year old Dell is finally losing its battery. I now get a warning when booting up- (forgot to write it down exactly) warning about battery failure. So, I bought a new battery- but I just noticed that the manual says I need to write down everything in Setup. Is that really necessary? One friend suggested that if I make a restore point before the replacement- it should contain that info, but I'm not so sure of that. So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that a PC should be able to do this itself! Joe If you replace the CR2032 coin-sized battery on a motherboard, and it happens to lose all of the settings, do not worry. The first time you boot the system, it will recognize that the CMOS settings are kaput, poll all drive channels on the system, then halt, telling you to press the F2 key to enter the system setup. You have to enter the correct date and time, and you can probably live with the default settings the BIOS ends up using. Here are some BIOS settings you might want to change, depending on the motherboard and the overall hardware configuration: 1. For many Dell systems, the default for a hyperthreaded processor is disabled. Surely, you would want to enable hyperthreading, if possible. 2. Display and clear the event log, after viewing it. The event log shows the abnormal events during system Power On Self Test (POST). But it becomes old news, so clear it. 3. If you have an audio card, like the Sound Blasters shipped with many Dells, disable the on-board audio. 4. You may want to modify the boot order, allowing the system to try to boot from floppy, then CD-ROM, then hard drive for example. Or leave it as is, and press the F12 key during POST to boot from a device different than usual. 5. For a laptop, you may want to change screen brighness settings. Perhaps someone else can add to this list, which I've fantasized from memory, rather than looking at one of many Dell BIOS setups... Ben Myers |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
need to replace battery- do I need to write down everything in sys. setup?
"Ben Myers" wrote:
If you replace the CR2032 coin-sized battery on a motherboard, and it happens to lose all of the settings, do not worry. The first time you boot the system, it will recognize that the CMOS settings are kaput, poll all drive channels on the system, then halt, telling you to press the F2 key to enter the system setup. You have to enter the correct date and time, and you can probably live with the default settings the BIOS ends up using. Here are some BIOS settings you might want to change, depending on the motherboard and the overall hardware configuration: 1. For many Dell systems, the default for a hyperthreaded processor is disabled. Surely, you would want to enable hyperthreading, if possible. 2. Display and clear the event log, after viewing it. The event log shows the abnormal events during system Power On Self Test (POST). But it becomes old news, so clear it. 3. If you have an audio card, like the Sound Blasters shipped with many Dells, disable the on-board audio. 4. You may want to modify the boot order, allowing the system to try to boot from floppy, then CD-ROM, then hard drive for example. Or leave it as is, and press the F12 key during POST to boot from a device different than usual. 5. For a laptop, you may want to change screen brighness settings. Perhaps someone else can add to this list, which I've fantasized from memory, rather than looking at one of many Dell BIOS setups... Ben Myers It seems that the 2 major options a 1) to write down the above list and whatever others may add to it, or... 2) to write down the BIOS settings before removing the battery. :-) *TimDaniels* |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
need to replace battery- do I need to write down everything in sys. setup?
|
#8
|
|||
|
|||
need to replace battery- do I need to write down everything in sys. setup?
"Joe" wrote in message ... Gee, my 8 year old Dell is finally losing its battery. I now get a warning when booting up- (forgot to write it down exactly) warning about battery failure. So, I bought a new battery- but I just noticed that the manual says I need to write down everything in Setup. Is that really necessary? One friend suggested that if I make a restore point before the replacement- it should contain that info, but I'm not so sure of that. So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that a PC should be able to do this itself! Joe There's no need to write anything down. Switch on your printer. Reboot. Press the [F2] key during reboot to bring up page 1 the BIOS screen Press the [Print Screen] key. The machine will eventually print out page 1 of the BIOS settings Press [Alt] [P] to bring up page 2 of the BIOS settings Again press the [Print Screen ] key and the machine should eventually print out page 2 of the Bios settings. Printing page 2 can sometimes create problems - the printer may give an out of paper request which needs to be cancelled, on mine anyway. But persistence pays off. I only know this because I've got still a copy of the bios settings titled "CMOS SETUP" of two previous Dell machines, all neatly printed out. Not quite remembering how I did this, I've just now done this one as well, to be sure michael adams .... |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
need to replace battery- do I need to write down everything in sys. setup?
"michael adams" wrote in
: "Joe" wrote in message ... Gee, my 8 year old Dell is finally losing its battery. I now get a warning when booting up- (forgot to write it down exactly) warning about battery failure. So, I bought a new battery- but I just noticed that the manual says I need to write down everything in Setup. Is that really necessary? One friend suggested that if I make a restore point before the replacement- it should contain that info, but I'm not so sure of that. So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that a PC should be able to do this itself! Joe There's no need to write anything down. Switch on your printer. Reboot. Press the [F2] key during reboot to bring up page 1 the BIOS screen Press the [Print Screen] key. The machine will eventually print out page 1 of the BIOS settings Press [Alt] [P] to bring up page 2 of the BIOS settings Again press the [Print Screen ] key and the machine should eventually print out page 2 of the Bios settings. Printing page 2 can sometimes create problems - the printer may give an out of paper request which needs to be cancelled, on mine anyway. But persistence pays off. I only know this because I've got still a copy of the bios settings titled "CMOS SETUP" of two previous Dell machines, all neatly printed out. Not quite remembering how I did this, I've just now done this one as well, to be sure michael adams ... That's news to me. I never thought you could print while in BIOS screens because print drivers haven't loaded up yet. I'll have to try it. I've always written down every BIOS setting when necessary, esp. when resurecting someone else's machine. |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
need to replace battery- do I need to write down everything in sys. setup?
So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that a PC should be able to do this itself! Joe There's no need to write anything down. Switch on your printer. Reboot. Press the [F2] key during reboot to bring up page 1 the BIOS screen Press the [Print Screen] key. The machine will eventually print out page 1 of the BIOS settings It doesn't work on a Studio XPS 9000 with no parallel port. Are you using a parallel printer or a USB printer? Tom Lake |
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
How do I replace the BIOS battery? | Kenn Caesius | Packard Bell Computers | 15 | August 18th 09 11:31 PM |
When to replace UPS battery? | [email protected] | General | 11 | March 15th 08 06:20 AM |
Replace individual DVD and CD Read/Write | Turner Morgan | Gateway Computers | 1 | December 17th 04 05:44 PM |
Primary replace battery for 600x | Denman | Gateway Computers | 2 | October 15th 04 12:35 PM |
Setup - CPQCM.sys missing | Neil Robinson | Compaq Computers | 0 | September 2nd 04 08:47 AM |