Thread: Battery settings lost

A few weeks ago I had a similar problem to the one you solved earlier about the battery on the computer's motherboard - the time and date settings were not sticking so I changed my CR2032 CMOS battery. My user guide also recommended this. Now, when I start the PC it checks the hard disk, CD and DVD drives but misses out the floppy disk drive and displays the wrong information about the memory and processor.

In the left-hand corner of the screen it says to press F2 to enter Setup. After pressing this key the PC will not progress any further. Is it possible to recover from this? The PC is a Packard Ball Platinum running Windows 98.

It sounds like you have a relatively old computer, on whicli the settings aren't automatically updated. On newer PCs, when you start the computer it automatically figures out the basic settings needed for it to start (such as what drives it has, what processor and how much memory) so that, even if the battery is dead, it's not a problem because the computer can still start normally.

On older computers this doesn't happen, and you need to make the changes to the settings yourself if they get wiped (which is what happens when the battery dies).

You'll need to look in the computer's manual for the appropriate settings, or contact Packard Bell's technical support department for information on what to enter (it varies widely depending on the exact model).

The good news is that even if your computer won't start, the data on your hard disk is still safe, so you haven't lost anything permanently.