Britec Tech Support Forum

Hi everybody

This morning had a power cut.  Anyway the power came back and I went and had a bath.  I have an old Dell Inspiron 531 which is still plugged in but I haven't used for some time.  Anyway come into room and hear a funny noise.  Look over at the computer and it is on.  Switch on monitor and nothing on screen.  Switch it off bad way then switch it on again.  I get a message saying something CMOS Checksum.  Sorry can't remember rest of it.  Strike F1 to continue.  Do that and it boots up fine and is still fine.

Any idea what happened.  Am I right in thinking CMOS Checksum because I haven't used computer for quite a while.  It's at the desktop and no probs so far.  Just had a look at the time on it and date and it saying 23:40 and it is 31 December 2006.  LOL.

Go into the BIOS and check the date and time, its probably set wrong. Also your CMOS battery maybe dying, replace to be sure. CMOS stores all of the information, so if its dying, it can't hold information you save to it.

(11-06-2016, 01:22 PM)Britec Wrote: [ -> ]Go into the BIOS and check the date and time, its probably set wrong. Also your CMOS battery maybe dying, replace to be sure. CMOS stores all of the information, so if its dying, it can't hold information you save to it.

Any idea why all of a sudden it would just come on by itself.

I would replace your cmos battery and then adjust correct date and time. Be sure to f10 save and exit when done.

There is a setting in the BIOS that you can change that tells the computer what to do if power is lost then regained. This will be in the Power Management settings. It is probably set to power on automatically after power loss.

Hello There!!

Agree with BOTH Britec and Timster Here - Same type of thing happened to me one day, when it could not boot correctly - Thought it was a CMOS Battery, and as such, had it replaced, but then realized that it was also a Hard drive problem - I had my tech in here, and he told me and my parents that it was a Hard Drive, a Video Card AND a Power supply all at the same time, because the old video card was HOT to the touch and almost burned my hand bad!!

Long story short, My parents had my tech replace the Hard Drive, The Video Card, and the Hard Drive, and as a precaution, I had him replace the CMOS Battery - I now have a 1TB drive on Thrush, so she should be set for a while now.

Go Ahead and replace the CMOS Battery - and let us know what happens - You will have to reset the information for your drives, but most times, it will auto detect them.

Good Luck!!

Brian

Well an update. Have just switched it on and all appears well. No probs with time or anything. Just make I boot it up once a week or so.

Replace CMOS battery cheap as chips.