Changing CMOS battery in dell dimension 521

Widescreen

I have got the message now saying warning battery voltage is low press f1 or f2 etc when I boot up. I think it is something to do with CMOS.

Anyway, my question is , do I just purchase a new battery and replace the old one with it and carry on again or are there other complications to doing this?

Thanks

yoyo

No complications usually it's just pop the old out and put a new one in (you can confirm this by opening the machine up and removing the battery), then re configure the bios to correct settings. A cr2032 battery is the most common battery used in computers, can get them in most computer/component shops etc.

Nick

Widescreen

Thanks a lot

When you say reconfigure the bios settings , is that an automatic thing once you select the correct menus etc? you don't have to have written down any settings before taking out the old battery?

thanks !

yoyo

Widescreen wrote: »

Thanks a lot

When you say reconfigure the bios settings , is that an automatic thing once you select the correct menus etc? you don't have to have written down any settings before taking out the old battery?

thanks !

Nah all modern bios are plug and play, if you are having no issues with booting the machine with a dead battery all the default components config is detecting automatically. Stuff like date/time you will need to re configure once the new batteries in situe

Nick

JonathanAnon

I wouldnt say that's an absolute banker though, yoyo... I remember a case a few years ago when I specifically went to Maplins to buy two cr2032s to fix the same error on two PCS... It fixed neither..

Also reminds me of a few years ago when I got a battery low error on my guitar effects pedal the night of a gig... I was panicking, googling to locate where I could get a new one, not realising that the exact same battery was actually sitting in the PC I was using to search the web.. :pac:

You could pull out the battery and run a voltmeter across it to check it... The new CR2032s that I got were about 3.21 volts... the old one that was giving the battery error in my guitar effects pedal was about 2.8/2.9 volts.

Widescreen

yoyo wrote: »

Nah all modern bios are plug and play, if you are having no issues with booting the machine with a dead battery all the default components config is detecting automatically. Stuff like date/time you will need to re configure once the new batteries in situe

Nick

FYI I changed the battery. Simple as you said. Computer working fine again.
Just took an extra reboot to get the AVG protection fully ok and that is spot on now.

Just one message comes up now when booting up . It says "Diskette Drive 0 seek failure" Press F1 or F2 to set up. Went into set up and presume I will have to change one of the settings to get rid of this prompt but was not sure which one to change. any help appreciated cheers

yoyo

Widescreen wrote: »

FYI I changed the battery. Simple as you said. Computer working fine again.
Just took an extra reboot to get the AVG protection fully ok and that is spot on now.

Just one message comes up now when booting up . It says "Diskette Drive 0 seek failure" Press F1 or F2 to set up. Went into set up and presume I will have to change one of the settings to get rid of this prompt but was not sure which one to change. any help appreciated cheers

In bios setup change boot priority to be your Hard Disk first

Nick

riclad

You can go to bios, select, disable floppy ,diskette drive, theres no reason to use 3.5 inch drives now .USB or cdrom,dvd Drives are a cheaper ,safer way to save data.
SET drive 0,first drive device = harddisk .