PSA: That weird postcode loop might be a dying CMOS battery, not your motherboard

So last week my rig started doing this strange thing where it would boot, run for like 10 seconds, then shut off and repeat. I spent a whole Saturday swapping RAM sticks, reseating the GPU, even re-flashing the BIOS because I was sure the board was toast. After like 4 hours of frustration, I noticed the clock in Windows was reset to 2015 when I finally got it to load up. Swapped out the CR2032 battery on the motherboard for like $3 at the gas station down the street and boom, no more boot loops. Has anyone else wasted a bunch of time on troubleshooting just because of a cheap little battery going dead?

2 comments

2 Comments

rowan_wells671d ago

My buddy had a similar issue with his old Dell Optiplex, took him two weeks to figure it out. He was convinced the PSU was dying because it would only crank up after he unplugged it and let it sit for a while. Turned out to be the same $3 battery, but he'd already spent like $60 on a new power supply before he noticed the clock was stuck on January 1st 2000. The weird part is that his system would actually boot fine after sitting for a few hours, like the battery had just enough juice to keep the CMOS settings for a little while. I've seen this happen with older boards where the battery voltage drops just below the threshold, and it causes all sorts of strange boot behavior that looks like a hardware failure. Sometimes the cheapest fix is the last thing you check, your mileage may vary but it's always worth swapping that battery out before you go buying new parts.

david8211d ago

Swap that battery first always. @rowan_wells67 nailed it, seen so many people chase ghosts when the CMOS battery is the real culprit.