Symptoms of mobo battery problems

[mrplow]

Hey all,

First off, thanks to all those who give advice and help around here, Ive learned tons just by reading/lurking around.

My question is this, what are some signs/symptoms of a bad/weak motherboard battery?

I built my machine roughly 18 months ago, and as of late have been having some issues. The other day my time was completely off, windows thought it was 2012...

Now Im having problems at startup, the bios begins to load and halfway through the screen that displays your hardware and IRQ assignments, and then I get the failed boot disk error, insert system disk.

Im hoping that the battery being weak is somehow resetting/altering my boot order. Am I far off here, or is this possible? It makes sense to me, because when the computer starts up correctly, it runs flawlessly, but every 3rd or 4th time I restart, it wont restart.

Thanks in advance for any replies or help!

[bassman]

Welcome to SysOpt! :)

Originally posted by mrplow
My question is this, what are some signs/symptoms of a bad/weak motherboard battery?
The clock being unadjusted is the most obvious pointer. Of course it could also be due to the clock being damaged, but that's not quite common...


Im hoping that the battery being weak is somehow resetting/altering my boot order.
I doubt that; the BIOS' setting are kept in a piece of non-volatile memory (ROM, or more specifically an EPROM or EEPROM). I'm pretty much sure the battery only maintains the clock, though a motherboard guru like PeterMissel could enlighten us on this.


Am I far off here, or is this possible? It makes sense to me, because when the computer starts up correctly, it runs flawlessly, but every 3rd or 4th time I restart, it wont restart.
It is possible...but not likely...it smells like your motherboard (or some of the PC's components) may not be working quite well. Post your system specs.


This being said, it won't hurt if you go out to a shop and buy a new (adequate) battery, at least the clock skew will be solved

[naptownman]

You could have battery problems. I've had a board that wouldn't boot when the battery got old and another that switched itself to the default BIOS settings when it got old. For about $3 you can rule that source out.

I'd look also at the mobo for leaking or bulging capacitors and you might also wnat to pull the pwoer supply and look inside it. A system that's 18 months old would use components made around the time the defective caps really began to manifest themselves in the marketplace. Do a site search of bulging caps and you'll find links from BiPolar Bill and others that show pictures of what to look for.

[mrplow]

Thanks guys, here are the specs:

Asus A7V333 motherboard
AMD 2500+ Barton CPU
512 Mb PC 2700 Samsung RAM
(3) Harddrives, the install on a brand new Seagate
Nvidia GeForce ti4400 Vid
PowMax 500W PSU

The PSU is brand new, only 2 days old, as is the Seagate HD (two weeks old).

My current install of Windows is only 5 days old.

When I first encountered these issues, I took everything out, cleaned the mainboard and memory of dust, cleaned the CPU and heatsink and reapplied paste. I visually inspected the mainboard as best I could, didnt notice anything out of the ordinary. When I slapped it all back together, it booted up just fine. It ran for about 12 hours without problems and was then shutdown. This morning I tried to restart, but it wouldnt boot. Running late for work already, I didnt have time to mess around with it.

I'll start with a new battery, and go from there, hopefully its not the motherboard, but if it is....theres my excuse to buy that gigabyte board I was looking at :). Thanks again guys.

[rsfnatik]

Hmm... you can try replacing the battery, but i'm not terribly confident that's the problem. Let us know how you make out once you try a new battery.

[ZBREAKER]

Those batteries due tend to last a long time. My old Dell from March 1999 is still running fine on the original one...tho probably not too much longer ;)

[bassman]

Many batteries last over 10 years...I really hope that it'll all go away when you swap it, but unfortunately I don't smell like it's gonna happen...but there's nothing like trying! :)

[mrplow]

The fix was simple enough, my bios was set to boot from a network device, rather than my hd...why, I have no clue.

I was under the impression that the battery had something to do with saving that information, but it seems I was incorrect.

Any ideas on why my boot order would change?

[bassman]

And the clock started working fine? :p

[mrplow]

Its working fine now, it was only off that one time, but it was off by like 5 years....

Its starting to look like I have a faulty chip on the old mobo, and my bios settings are not being saved properly when I shutdown.

[Imperion1]

The motherboard battery does have an effect on the cmos (Bios). Where else would the cmos get its power to retain the settings set in Bios? Especially if you were to unplug the power to the powersupply or motherboard.
Removing the cmos battery resets the cmos to default, remember?

And if memory serves, didn't Asus have a bad batch of batteries go out with the A7V333 motherboards? This was one reason why people were told to replace the battery if they bought one of these boards. Maybe it was the A7A board I'm thinking of.

[Imperion1]

And, a powersupply thats going bad will do this also. Had it happen before.

[mrplow]

Hi guys, thanks for all the help above. I replaced that battery, hoping that would get me through these problems.

Lately things have been getting worse, tell me what you think of this...

The last three mornings I have awoken to a PC that seems to be running just fine, but when I try to load an app (IE, Outlook, etc) Windows just locks up completely forcing a manual shutdown.

When I try to restart, my bios wont post at all, no beep (what a lonely feeling that is...)

The first time it happened, I ripped everything out, made sure it wasnt a short between the case and the mobo, made sure all the cable were secure, cleaned all the dust off of everything, etc. Slapped it all back together, and it worked like a champ, he following morning, Im back to no post.

Since then I just open it up, unplug the PSU, try to restart, unseat the RAM, try to restart.... This goes on until my machine actually chooses to post, but it seems completely random. Sometimes I just have to leave it alone, go do something else for an hour, and when I return it works fine.

My specs are above, any ideas? Thanks again for any help, as the random nature of my problems is really frustrating.

[bassman]

Ah...I really thought it was too much to be caused by some battery...:rolleyes:
Try getting known good RAM and a video card (borrow it from a friend, for example) and replace yours, to see if they're damaged. Make sure your IDE cables are fine. Also try a new power supply and post your system specs (namely what PCI cards you have installed). Have you ever updated your BIOS?

[naptownman]

What are your system temps at idle and what are they when you been doing stuff for awhile? It almost sounds thermal, like the CPU is getting hot, but it could also be a thermal problem with the PSU or a solder joint in the motherboard. About all you can do is try to borrow parts from friends or another system and troubleshoot by the process of elimination.

[mrplow]

I have eliminated the vid card, and the PSU is brand new, and I had the same issues with the prior unit.

The CPU runs pretty cool, around 55 Celsius at load.

Its starting to look like the motherboard has run its course.

Did I mention that once it boots it still runs like a champ, same performance as always, no crashes, etc. Its only when I leave it idle all night or try to restart it that I get problems.

[bassman]

Originally posted by mrplow
the PSU is brand new
Get another one anyway, it could be new and ruined


Its starting to look like the motherboard has run its course
That had ocurred to me previously...