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From: Joe on 29 Jul 2010 10:53
Gee, my 8 year old Dell is finally losing its battery. I now get a warning
when booting up- (forgot to write it down exactly) warning about battery
failure. So, I bought a new battery- but I just noticed that the manual says
I need to write down everything in Setup. Is that really necessary? One
friend suggested that if I make a restore point before the replacement- it
should contain that info, but I'm not so sure of that.

So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that a
PC should be able to do this itself!

Joe

From: Timothy Daniels on 29 Jul 2010 12:53
Assuming that you're talking about the lithium "coin" battery that powers
the ROM while the PC is shut down, the capacitors *should* keep enough
voltage on the ROM to give you enough time to remove the old battery
and insert the new one. But if the capacitor(s) is(are) leaky, you'll lose the
BIOS settings when the old battery is removed, so you should write those
down just in case. If you're curious or energetic enough to perform an
experiment, try removing the old battery and wiping its metal surface and
the metal contact surface of the holding clip with an abrasive paper towel -
enough to make the metal shiny again - and then pop it back in the holding
clip. (If you have a can of spray-on contact cleaner, that will help, too. Just
spray it on and wipe the metal surface clean.) The warning message may not
appear, indicating that you'll probably get another few months or couple years
out of the old battery.

*TimDaniels*


"Joe" wrote:
> Gee, my 8 year old Dell is finally losing its battery. I now get a warning when booting up- (forgot to write it down
> exactly) warning about battery failure. So, I bought a new battery- but I just noticed that the manual says I need to
> write down everything in Setup. Is that really necessary? One friend suggested that if I make a restore point before
> the replacement- it should contain that info, but I'm not so sure of that.
>
> So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that a PC should be able to do this itself!
>
> Joe


From: GTS-NJ on 29 Jul 2010 13:33
As a general rule the BIOS will work at it's normal defaults if you never
customized any settings, so it shouldn't be necessary to write them down.
In all likelihood, since you've gotten the warning, the system has already
lost settings and used defaults on startup.
A restore point is completely irrelevant to the BIOS.
..

"Joe" <joe(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:i2s4lf$bmf$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
> Gee, my 8 year old Dell is finally losing its battery. I now get a warning
> when booting up- (forgot to write it down exactly) warning about battery
> failure. So, I bought a new battery- but I just noticed that the manual
> says I need to write down everything in Setup. Is that really necessary?
> One friend suggested that if I make a restore point before the
> replacement- it should contain that info, but I'm not so sure of that.
>
> So, should I bother to write down everything in Setup? I should think that
> a PC should be able to do this itself!
>
> Joe

From: Timothy Daniels on 29 Jul 2010 15:11
"Ben Myers" wrote:
> If you replace the CR2032 coin-sized battery on a motherboard, and it happens to lose all of the settings, do not
> worry. The first time you boot the system, it will recognize that the CMOS settings are kaput, poll all drive
> channels on the system, then halt, telling you to press the F2 key to enter the system setup. You have to enter the
> correct date and time, and you can probably live with the default settings the BIOS ends up using.
>
> Here are some BIOS settings you might want to change, depending on the motherboard and the overall hardware
> configuration:
>
> 1. For many Dell systems, the default for a hyperthreaded processor is disabled. Surely, you would want to enable
> hyperthreading, if possible.
> 2. Display and clear the event log, after viewing it. The event log shows the abnormal events during system Power On
> Self Test (POST). But it becomes old news, so clear it.
> 3. If you have an audio card, like the Sound Blasters shipped with many Dells, disable the on-board audio.
> 4. You may want to modify the boot order, allowing the system to try to boot from floppy, then CD-ROM, then hard drive
> for example. Or leave it as is, and press the F12 key during POST to boot from a device different than usual.
> 5. For a laptop, you may want to change screen brighness settings.
>
> Perhaps someone else can add to this list, which I've fantasized from memory, rather than looking at one of many Dell
> BIOS setups...

Ben Myers


It seems that the 2 major options are:
1) to write down the above list and whatever others may add to it, or...
2) to write down the BIOS settings before removing the battery. :-)

*TimDaniels*


From: RnR on 29 Jul 2010 17:20
In article <A5ydnZH4donIT8zRnZ2dnUVZ_sSdnZ2d(a)earthlink.com>,
NoSpam(a)SpamMeKnot.biz says...
>
> "Ben Myers" wrote:
> > If you replace the CR2032 coin-sized battery on a motherboard, and it happens to lose all of the settings, do not
> > worry. The first time you boot the system, it will recognize that the CMOS settings are kaput, poll all drive
> > channels on the system, then halt, telling you to press the F2 key to enter the system setup. You have to enter the
> > correct date and time, and you can probably live with the default settings the BIOS ends up using.
> >
> > Here are some BIOS settings you might want to change, depending on the motherboard and the overall hardware
> > configuration:
> >
> > 1. For many Dell systems, the default for a hyperthreaded processor is disabled. Surely, you would want to enable
> > hyperthreading, if possible.
> > 2. Display and clear the event log, after viewing it. The event log shows the abnormal events during system Power On
> > Self Test (POST). But it becomes old news, so clear it.
> > 3. If you have an audio card, like the Sound Blasters shipped with many Dells, disable the on-board audio.
> > 4. You may want to modify the boot order, allowing the system to try to boot from floppy, then CD-ROM, then hard drive
> > for example. Or leave it as is, and press the F12 key during POST to boot from a device different than usual.
> > 5. For a laptop, you may want to change screen brighness settings.
> >
> > Perhaps someone else can add to this list, which I've fantasized from memory, rather than looking at one of many Dell
> > BIOS setups...
>
> Ben Myers
>
>
> It seems that the 2 major options are:
> 1) to write down the above list and whatever others may add to it, or...
> 2) to write down the BIOS settings before removing the battery. :-)
>
> *TimDaniels*

Tim, it's been my experience that in worst case scenario the bios
defaults to it's "default" setup. Now if he does have custom settings,
maybe he should write them down ahead of time as I don't know how long
the retention time is. I would think there is a retention time but I
can't really say.
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