BIOS Looses HD Information

  • Thread starter Thread starter JCO
  • Start date Start date
J

JCO

What causes the HD info to get lost in the BIOS. I know this use to happen
when the battery is dead but I would think that it would loose the clock and
everything. I boot up and it keeps searching for a HD but can't find one.
Finally I go into the setup and see that the there was NO information on the
HD in the BIOS.

Thanks in advance.
 
JCO said:
What causes the HD info to get lost in the BIOS. I know this use to
happen when the battery is dead but I would think that it would loose
the clock and everything. I boot up and it keeps searching for a HD
but can't find one. Finally I go into the setup and see that the
there was NO information on the HD in the BIOS.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Your CMOS battery (the little coin-shaped one) on the mother board has
expired. Replace it.
Depending on HOW dead it is, it can happen as you describe it. The
battery change is quick & easy unless it's a desktop.

If a new battery doesn't help, then you are very likely looking at hardware
problems unless someone pipes in with a different experience than mine.

HTH
Pop`
 
What about the HD going bad?

Poprivet said:
Your CMOS battery (the little coin-shaped one) on the mother board has
expired. Replace it.
Depending on HOW dead it is, it can happen as you describe it. The
battery change is quick & easy unless it's a desktop.

If a new battery doesn't help, then you are very likely looking at
hardware problems unless someone pipes in with a different experience than
mine.

HTH
Pop`
Click to expand...
 
If everything other than the Hard Drive information is OK in the bios it is
NOT the battery going bad.

You either have a HDD failure or the power cable or the drive ribbon cable
has come unattached. Open the case with the system off. (Any cable or
touching inside the case should be with the power off and the computer
unplugged since the motherboard may have power present with the system
turned off.) Reseat the cables on the HDD and turn on the system and listen
for the drive to spin up. If it does not spin up, replace the power cable
with another one off the power supply. If it spins up, replace the ribbon
cable. If this doesn't solve the problem, attempt to use the HDD in a
computer (as the secondary drive) to see if it can be accessed. If it
can't, the drive is bad.
 
I've already replaced all the cables last month when the problem was first
brought to my attention.
The drive spins up and you can feel it vibrate. So far, since my friend
brought the computer to me, I've only had to restore the information in the
bios one time. It's been running every since ... just fine. I've been
browsing with it. I used Norton Utilities to check the entire drive
(including free space). No issues yet.

Since I can't get the issue to repeat, checking cables and replacing the
battery are both cheap and easy to do. But no telling how long I will have
to wait before I can assume that the issue is fixed. Your right about
switching the HD to the other controller. I tested that out already but
then moved it back to its original position.

Thanks for the great advice. Seems that I had most of it covered already.
I may just have to wait it out longer. I will put the case back on to see
if that has anything to do with it. One fear is that it could be heat
related too.
 
From your original post I assumed that the bios information was not there
when the system was first turned on. If so this won't be an overheating
problem. If it loses the bios information after the machine has been
running for a period of time this very well could be the problem.
 
True, the pc was given to me and the information in the bios was missing the
first time I booted up.

This is true. I tested for heat by letting the pc run for 4-days straight.
This is after I replaced the battery and reseeding the cables (to ensure
that they were not loose).

Now I plan to leave the system off (current state) for 2-days, start it up
and shut it down for 2-days again. At that time, the person who owns the
system will come over and pick it up.

So far, I only had to put the HD info into the BIOS one time only (at the
beginning). This is why the owner gave it to me to look at in the first
place.

I will update any progress.
 
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