A $10 battery dammit!

[illusionist 0]

Just a little note that might help someone else:

 

Yesterday I came down to my comp and was trying to open a file a friend sent me for some brochures he had made but I couldn’t open the file in Corel 8. I called him and he suggested that I check if there were any updates from Corel that I had missed. I checked the site found the latest update and proceeded to install the service pack. As the screen came up stating “ Windows needs to restart” I clicked yes and the shut down started.

Now the fun started after you would have expected the system to start up again NOTHING BUT BLACKSCREEN! Thought I had a hard lock. After about 2 min. I reset the system. Again nothing ; couldn’t even get to the bios. There was no beeps all the fans were running and I thought that I had hashed my bios somehow.

A friend suggested that the power supply may have gone down during the shut down process and that I try to install a new one. Even though all the power seemed to be on and all fans in the power supply and all card fans were running we thought that there may have been an under power situation. So I did that and again nothing.

I decided to shut the system down and piece by piece remove components. As I was down to just one stick of ram , that I had swapped to all available slots , and a video card still nothing. All power seemed ok but I still couldn’t get even a beep. So I tried to discharge the cmos. Still nothing. This is now about three hours later and after cleaning all the areas of the case, all components I thought that my cmos was toast and was contemplating a nice $500.00 upgrade for a motherboard and cpu. Not what I had expected when I started that morning.

I was just about to go to the store and pick up the new components when I thought

“Lets try a $10.00 new battery “ . Well I got the battery popped it in and to my amazement the system sprang to life. Slowly I got to the starting windows bar then to the desktop .

I added each new component , went through the start and shut down each time until I was back to normal. At 4.5 hrs from start to finish I had solved the problem .

The reason that I write this is so that if this was to happen to anyone else I suggest that you try the $10.00 battery first.

[JP- 0]

batteries rule, i had no idea they could have such an effect, i thought the system would turn on but just lose the settings occasionally.

[illusionist 0]

I had no idea either but if I would have done this in revese order I would have found it first instead of last.(should have read the instructions dooooooh! )

lol

[JP- 0]

No-one ever reads the instructions Actually makes me wonder about a board i had, should have tried that.

[insaNity 0]

In the old days at least, M4Carbine would be completely right. They work fine with a flat battery but will lose settings if turned off for a few minutes.

 

But I think some of the newer boards use a different system, and some are even battery-less.

 

Anyone care to explain how it all works these days?

[OLEerror 0]

I have a feeling the problem was not that the battery was dead but that it was somehow causing a short in the board. Possibly just removing the battery and re-seating it would have solved the problem, as well. Check to be sure that there are no stary metal pieces on, or near, the battery connection.

 

Many of the new motherboards use a BIOS chip that has a built-in ten year battery. It's actually a type of capacitor instead of a real battery. This is why you often don't see one, anymore. The problem with this is some of them also do not include a battery riser to connect an external battery when the integrated one dies.

[illusionist 0]

I'm certain that this was the battery as I took the battery out and then reinserted after I had finished the case and component cleaning. After I had removed it cleaned it and reinserted it ( as I have found that sometimes you can remove a battery and reinstall it cleaned and it will worrk due to possable poor contact) is when the system still would not boot let alone get to the bios that I realized that I should try to get a new battery before spending a wack of dooooohhhhh!

It's the 3/4" flat battery maxell cr2032 3v hitachi Maxell LTD. Japan battery so there is no mistaking it . Btw this is an Abit BH6 board with a slot 1 700 p3 if anyone was wondering. Thats why I was saying that I'd have to put up 5 bones for a new board and cpu cause there are no slot 1 boards at the local retail levelunless u order them. I unfortunatly can't wait as the satelite systems were down and I needed to put out some new script to all the dealers fast. Anyways thanks for the reply.

 

L8tr

[illusionist 0]

I forgot to ask you. You had mentioned that the new systeems are using a battery / capacitor in the system boards . If this is true then thats kind of a short sighted engineering flaw wouldn't you think. The reason that i'm saying this is that in a lenghty period of power out or say storage time wouldn't the capasitor discharge and in turn loss any information stored.

 

Thanks again OLE

 

L8tr

[CUViper 0]

Here's a bit of theory behind capacitors:

The function for a capacitor discharge is e^(-t/RC). R is the resistance of the load attached to the capacitor, and C is the capacitance. So after a time t=RC, the charge will be about 1/3 of what it started at. So if you can keep RC sufficiently large, it can store the charge for a relatively long time. However, since R is typically on the order of kohms (10^3) to Mohms (10^6), and C is typically on the order of micro-Farads (10^-6), a "relatively long time" would be mere seconds.

 

That probably more in depth than you were looking for, but my point is that there has to be more that just a capacitor if it is to maintain voltages as long as the computer would need (days, preferably months).

 

At this point in my education, I know a lot more theory than application, so I couldn't tell you what they are actually using. I suspect there is still some sort of battery in there though.

[insaNity 0]

very interesting.

 

Would you still have the old battery to try again for us at all?

[illusionist 0]

lafa;k aj jwah j;k ;ihji j;rowja oir;o ;oaj h;oj ; ok just getting my witts back after reading your explanation ........................hsjdfksf..........sorry momentary laps due to grey matter overload . Thanks for your reply and as soon as the tyoneon 3's kick in I'll try to digest that.

 

 

L8tr

[illusionist 0]

Yeah I still have the battery and have tested it on a multi tester with voltage but as soon as I put a load on it there is nothing ........so yeah it's going to battery heaven. lol

 

l8tr

[insaNity 0]

no, in the motherboard

[SHS 0]

That very wierd illusionist but any case you shouldn't have take out the battery if it dead it should boot rigth up with the default bios setting, Did you try with out a battery on the motherboard did it boot up in default bios setting?, I would have agree with few folks here there may be a problem with the motherboard it self.

[CUViper 0]

Quote:

lafa;k aj jwah j;k ;ihji j;rowja oir;o ;oaj h;oj ; ok just getting my witts back after reading your explanation ........................hsjdfksf..........sorry momentary laps due to grey matter overload . Thanks for your reply and as soon as the tyoneon 3's kick in I'll try to digest that.



L8tr

Heh, sorry about that - I gotta stop thinking aloud That kind of stuff is pretty cool when you get into it though

[ThC 129 0]

too much math in engineering for me. I ditched it for Management Information systems.

[illusionist 0]

No I nerver tried to boot it without the battery I didn't even know that it could be done. everything is running well now and I really don't want to mess with anything. If it aint broke don't fix it.

 

L8tr

[insaNity 0]

then I guess we will just never know...

 

The unsolved mystery...

 

we will be left pondering for eternity...

 

[illusionist 0]

I tried to pu the battery back in after I had backed up all my files ( u know save games and what ) and sure enough the damn system went down again . I hate you for pushing me into this ..........lol.

No problem though insanity i shut down and put my new battery back in and everything came back up and seems normal for 5 hours now.

As a note I did not get any further than befor although this time I did have to go to the bios and set auto detect in the hd as the first boot did not go as straight forwrd as I suspected. In addition now when I rebbot I have a tsc.exe cant find local drive\ blada blada blad but that appears to be just something to do with pc-cillon .

Anyways I do hate you now ( just kidding ) but I'm sure it's something simple with that error.

 

L8tr

[insaNity 0]

lol, I'm sorry man

 

Quote:

I did have to go to the bios and set auto detect in the hd as the first boot

Well that is fairly normal for having a flat battery so no probs there.

 

Quote:

In addition now when I rebbot I have a tsc.exe cant find local drive\ blada blada blad but that appears to be just something to do with pc-cillon .

Yeah, I think you are right, it could be the "Trojan System Cleaner" tool. That was probably nothing to do with the whole battery thing.

 

Thanks for trying it for us. No doubt this topic will save me in the future. I owe you one

 

-insaNity

[illusionist 0]

I emailed PC-cillon about the error I was getting and they sent me a reply saying that it is a prob that sometimes happens. They sent me a fix as the TSC.exe file was corrupt. unzipped, applied and everythings good again. Love flowers in the meadow lalalalala. Anyways everything is up and now if I could just get IE6 working properly life would be good. But that would be too much to ask for.

 

L8tr:D

[JP- 0]

Peace everyone, be nice.