cmos

dubtom

Need to change the battery on my Dell 8300,I'm getting a warning that it's low on startup. In regards to Cmos, is it just a case of taking a pic of whats listed and then copying when the batteries changed or will xp auto detect every thing but the time?

ricman

You ,r changing the cmos battery, it may go back to default bios settings or factory bios settings,you ,ll need to set the time in xp,after changing .You can go to bios ,set all drives to autodetect, if windows does,nt load.You may wanna change bios setting from fast boot to normal boot.
its a good idea just to photograph the bios menus,settings,advanced settings ,memory settings etc just in case, you may wanna change em back.IT saves having to remember everything, make sure the bios battery is the same voltage as the old one.You may have special memory,or graphics setup,eg agp off, eg shadow system rom on.Maybe you installed xp,and never changed the bios settings,or its a windows factory install.
windows does not control the bios, but it,,ll probably go back to default bios settings, try and change the battery, quick,like 2 minutes.Unplug the power cable from the pc first,theres power going thru a pc even when knocked off.

dubtom

Thanks for that ricman, it's a fresh reinstall, I haven't changed anything so hopefully it's straight forward.

dubtom

Good news,battery changed and all I had to reset was time and date. I really should throw out my copy of ho to fix PC's for dummies,it's outdated info had me sweating
Thanks again for the help ricman.