Question Changed Cmos Battery Now My Pc Is Buggered

TimCurry

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Oct 21, 2011
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Hello. I have a 2008 Small Form Format Acer Aspire x3200 (Triple Core). This has the da078l boxer motherboard.

The last couple of days I noticed that the PC wasn't keeping time during shutdown so I changed the CMOS battery.

I tested the old battery and it was completely dead.

When I switched the machine back on after changing the battery, it did it's standard beep, went to the options screen (F12 for boot options/DEL to enter SETUP) but then did a quick double beep and came up with a screen saying:

IDE Channel 0 Master : None
IDE Channel 0 Slave : None

CMOS checksum error - Defaults loaded

Press F1 to continue, DEL to enter SETUP


However, F1 and DEL will not respond. Neither will the initial F12 or DEL options before the double beep. I tried leaving the system for about 30 minutes after trying F1 and DEL, in case there was some kind of system delay, but nothing responded.

I have power going to the HDD and DVD Rom as these can be heard spinning up and the eject function works on the DVD Rom.

I have tried removing and replacing all the RAM, the GFX Card, the CMOS battery and also tried using the Clear CMOS jumper. I have also removed and replaced all system/motherboard plugs and cables.

I left the battery out overnight with the Clear CMOS jumper in the "Clear" setting. I tried the system again this morning to find the exact same problem.

If I power the machine, with the battery out and/or the Clear Cmos jumper active, I still get the same double beep and the same error screen.

My HDD & DVD ROM are SATA 2.

Can anyone help? I have a lot of important documents on this system.

Many thanks in advance.
 

TimCurry

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Get into the BIOS setup by pressing the DEL key and select Load Factory Defaults, save and exit.
Or you might need to manually select the SATA disk in the boot order.
Thanks for the reply. The system will not respond to keypresses so I cannot enter BIOS. Is there a possibility that there's a failure to detect my keyboard? There is no system warning to imply this though. My keyboard is non-USB. Thanks again.
 

Mehda

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Aug 11, 2019
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Is your keyboard a USB keyboard? I had a really old motherboard with an old BIOS and it would not detect USB devices until the USB controller started, meaning I could not enter the BIOS. If your motherboard has a PS/2 connector (considering its age it probably will), you could buy a cheap PS/2 keyboard or a USB to PS/2 adapter. This may allow you to enter the BIOS and fix whatever problem you have. The PS/2 connection is designed specifically for keyboard/mice and does not rely on a controller to function.
 

Karadjgne

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Try continually mashing delete right after you turn on the pc. The single beep is the post code, the double beep the error code, so you'll want to try and get into bios before the error can kick in.

You did put the battery in correctly, it's fully seated and right side up? Checksum errors usually occur when there's a need to reset cmos/bios defaults because the battery is dead.
 
Last edited:

TimCurry

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Many thanks to all that replied. It turns out that the keyboard plug had a problem (broken pin) so I used a USB KB instead.

I was surprised that the system didn't warn me about non-keyboard detection. Maybe that was the double-beep.

All up and running. Until January, that is, when I have to install Windows 10 and reinstall everything again. ;)