Bad battery or mobo problem?

[bevills1]

Today I got message "CMOS battery fail. BIOS defaults set." when starting system which is about 2 years old. Is this likely a bad battery as it seems, or could it be possible mobo problem? In older systems I've had the battery would get weak gradually and lose 3 or 4 hours over night, but I've never had this type error before. No time loss was evident before this happened, but time, data and all BIOS settings had to be reset. Also batteries have always lasted 5 years or longer in my other systems. Is it possible for a battery to fail suddenly without symptoms it's getting weak first?

[redwudz]

It's possible for one to die early, but not very common. As you mentioned, they often last at least 5 years. I would just change it out with a new one. If you still have the same problem, then it would likely be something in the motherboard. You might want to also check the battery holder to see if it may have a loose clip. A lot of MBs use a 232 cell, which even Kmart or other stores seem to carry.

[bevills1]

I've never had a battery last less than 5 years before while many have gone 8 years or so before needing replacement. However, battery replacement fixed the problem which seems to indicate either old battery or poor quality battery supplied with mobo.

[oldfart13]

Not in a Dell was it? Friends have had them fail in as little as 18 months among other problems with Dell laptops. Class action lawsuits galore against that company.....

[bevills1]

It's not a Dell, but an MSI mobo with Nvidia chipset AMD system I put together about 2 years ago.

[cd090580]

Buy a new battery, it's about 3-4 € (4-5 $).

You can also check your old one (it's voltage is normally 3V when it's full).

[DereX888]

Powering off your computer for few minutes/hours (and unplugging from any power source) should give you clean resetted to defaults BIOS again if its a battery problem. If it won't happen, you have (or just had one-time) some other problem on motherboard, ie power supply could have spiked temporarily, or one of many other possibilities. It could be difficult or impossible to find out what really happened if the same problem won't occur again.

[bevills1]

cd090580, as stated in my 6/17 post battery replacement resolved the problem.

[DereX888]

cd090580, as stated in my 6/17 post battery replacement resolved the problem.

duh!