Can a dead CMOS battery cause a no-boot situation?

C

Cproflow

Weaksauce
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Aug 10, 2005
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Never happend to me before, but I'm betting ready to put an older AMD S939 system jout to pasture (learn to play with Linux, just have something to destroy and not feel bad). I've had the box for years and it has always worked wonders. It has sat unused for the better half of a year since I last booted it up...and that worked. It has just been sitting for about 6 months really, and the box is probably 3+ years old anyway.

I get power to the board (LED lights) but other than that...nothing. The PSU is an old school OCZ 520 Powerstream, which has been simply bankable. Nothing has happend to the unit since the last time I powered it off.

Before I started pulling wires and jumping PSUs...I was thinking maybe the old CMOS battery is dead...certainly has bee long enough.

Could that cause a no-boot condition if it is 100% tapped out?

Let me know and I'll get another battery!
 
AFAIK a dead CMOS battery won't keep a machine from booting.

Sounds like a faulty PS to me.
 
CMOS battery won't cause no boot. You can boot with NO battery. Shame if it's the PSU. I've used that same PSU for years without issues.
 
the only thing the battery is for, is to prevent BIOS settings from resetting if power is lost to the system, ie unplugged from the wall, power outage, etc.

as stated, the system will run normally without the battery/with a dead battery.
 
Pull the battery completely out. It should have no problem with that. At least I have never seen this to cause a no boot.
 
It is not the norm. I have 10+ year old machines at work with dead CMOS batteries and they still boot up without any issue. Some of them do prompt about the CMOS being corrupt hit some key to continue.
 
From past experiences, Yes it can. My old nforce 4 939 system would not boot when I had a fight taking out the battery and forgot to put it back in. Same thing with my buddys Gigabyte 785g system after a unsuccessful overclock that required me to take it out.
 
A dead battery would halt at BIOS startup- indicating that your systems settings have been lost (just like a bad overclock). If you press F1 it will continue to boot, if you go to bios and save your setting it will continue to boot. When you power down, you will halt when the BIOS startup.

A dead battery should never prevent boot. Seems like some people post have had an issue, but not normal.
 
vincinator44 said:
A dead battery would halt at BIOS startup- indicating that your systems settings have been lost (just like a bad overclock). If you press F1 it will continue to boot, if you go to bios and save your setting it will continue to boot. When you power down, you will halt when the BIOS startup.
Click to expand...

That has been what I have seen in the past.
 
vincinator44 said:
A dead battery would halt at BIOS startup- indicating that your systems settings have been lost (just like a bad overclock). If you press F1 it will continue to boot, if you go to bios and save your setting it will continue to boot. When you power down, you will halt when the BIOS startup.

A dead battery should never prevent boot. Seems like some people post have had an issue, but not normal.
Click to expand...
With that VIsionTop Otto VT586TX mobo, booting with no battery would cause a continuous single beep, no video at all, not even ISA bus video. Keep in mind that VisionTop was so bad that it made even ECS seem like high class hardware, and I think a resistor or glass diode around the battery socket was missing.
 
Update to ancient thread: The MSI Z68A-G43 (G3) (Socket 1155) won't do anything without a CMOS battery installed.
 
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