GuzziHero Posted June 19, 2008 Report Share Posted June 19, 2008 My PC has started being very slow on startup, hanging for about a minute on the POST. When it does come on, the clock is often a half hour slow. New PC time dya think? Link to post Share on other sites
Svack Posted June 19, 2008 Report Share Posted June 19, 2008 sounds like the bios battery may have problems, I used to have one that did that, I threw it out and got a new one! (well, it was a pentium II with 64mb of ram!) Link to post Share on other sites
GuzziHero Posted June 19, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 19, 2008 Mine is about 7 yrs old, and I remember from when I was in ITeC that bios batteries have about a 10 year expected lifespan. So yep...i think its probably time for a change Link to post Share on other sites
Sonic Reducer Posted June 19, 2008 Report Share Posted June 19, 2008 My PC has started being very slow on startup, hanging for about a minute on the POST. When it does come on, the clock is often a half hour slow. New PC time dya think? your BIOS battery might be dying. next time youre at walmart or something pick up a CR2032 coin cell battery, it'll be a couple bucks. it's about the dimensions of two quarters stacked. thats the standard BIOS battery on desktops. turn your computer off, remove all power (i just hit the switch on the surge protector), then ground yourself to the chassis of the computer. pop the battery out on the motherboard, most motherboards hold it flat against the motherboard in a plastic mount with a tooth on one side holding it down, the latch is a metal tooth on the opposite side that is also the fronts electrical contact. it's so simple that reading the description should take you longer to pop it out. wait maybe 30 seconds put the new coin cell in PAYING SPECIAL ATTENTION TO POLARIZATION. i don't know if the BIOS chip has reverse current protection, but i'd honestly just as soon not find out. i assume you'd like to not find out either. that should fix it, the whole BIOS system if solid state, so it's fairly reliable. worst-case scenario your computer is toast and you're out a couple extra bucks, but at least you'd know for certain it's dead Link to post Share on other sites
GuzziHero Posted June 19, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 19, 2008 Ahh...i have CR2032s for my red dot scopes! I didnt realise the battery was replaceable! Thanks so much, Sonic Reducer! You're my new best friend Link to post Share on other sites
Sonic Reducer Posted June 19, 2008 Report Share Posted June 19, 2008 Ahh...i have CR2032s for my red dot scopes! I didnt realise the battery was replaceable! Thanks so much, Sonic Reducer! You're my new best friend no problem man, i'm the tech support in my town Link to post Share on other sites
Stealthbomber Posted June 19, 2008 Report Share Posted June 19, 2008 A slightly different thought... Have you recently messed with any of the power settings on you PC? Thing is, if your BIOS is at fault you'll usually get a message saying something like "No BIOS data found. Loading default settings" as well as, probably, telling you to press F1 to continue. If this happens then your BIOS almost definitely IS losing the settings, probably due to a flat battery. However.... I recently had a similar thing on my laptop. I hadn't messed with any of the settings so I can only speculate that the problem was caused by one of XPs automatic updates altering the way XP handles Suspension/Hibernation of a PC. Basically my laptop was set to sit and wait for half an hour before going to Suspend mode. What I'd notice was that, if I left my computer for an hour, when I came back the clock would be half an hour wrong. Obviously it seemed that the problem was to do with the PC shutting down the clock function when it went to Suspend mode. I messed about with this for a couple of weeks, trying a variety of things, but in the end I just disabled the Suspend function and the problem went away. Changing the BIOS battery is the easiest thing to check obviously. I'm just putting a bit more advice out there for anybody who is in the same boat I was. Link to post Share on other sites
GuzziHero Posted June 19, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 19, 2008 Hmm...only thing I did do a few weeks back was set it to shut the screen down after 10 mins. Ive turned that off, and Ill see what happens. Cheers --- Edit: Just did a reboot and no change in the clock. But of course it was only off for 15s. This suggests more to me that its the BIOS clock. Link to post Share on other sites
MaRzY Posted June 19, 2008 Report Share Posted June 19, 2008 You might want to try just taking the battery out - restarting the system then putting it back in - make sure it's in there and has a good connection then restarting again. Also - you might have an error event log in the bios - have a look and see if there's any messages in there. Link to post Share on other sites
Svack Posted June 19, 2008 Report Share Posted June 19, 2008 sometimes the batteries are fiddly! one of the ones we had to change at work took 2 people to do it you may find a small flathead screwdriver useful! The changes in the clock indicate the battery is low rather then flat, so while it isn't loseing the bios setting, the clock has slowed down enough to be innaccurate Link to post Share on other sites
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