Urgent: clients PC is not holding on to BIOS settings

[d3v]

Hey guys a very good client of mine dropped a desktop PC many months ago asking me to downgrade him from Windows 8 to Windows 7. After the usual change of boot mode, CSM ect settings, allowing the change of OS, everything went great and the PC ran fine with Windows 7 Home Premium for approx 2-3 weeks, then got a call from him telling me "no bootable device" error.

After he dropped it off for the second time I realised the BIOS had reverted back to Windows 8 CSM (whatever it's called) boot protection mode thingy, so I decided to replace the CR2032 with a brand new one, re-configure BIOS, and everything worked just fine.

Now today, approx 3 weeks from replacing the cell battery, he calls to say the same "no bootable device" error.

I asked him to drop it back in but he says he needs to use sage to pay his staff wages by friday this week (48 hours) and that he'll be buying a new PC from PC World for me to swap all his data to, ect ect.

I want to try and fix his PC without having him fork out for a brand new one, but with such short time, and having never came across this problem before, hoping someone here knows what is causing this..... faulty mobo??

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Could be faulty....but....I'd download the latest BIOS for it, reset to defaults, flash the BIOS, reset to default again...and then kick in yer settings. See if it holds now.

 

[glennd]

Honestly, if it's a business critical machine and you can't guarantee a fix today or tomorrow he should get another machine and let you try and fix the old one and keep it as a backup.

 

[HFultzjr]

The only time I've come across anything similar, it was bad solder joints on the coin cell holder. Kept losing settings. Drove me nuts until I figured it out.

 

[d3v]

Hi all, he came around first thing next morning with a brand new Lenvo AIO which I promptly migrated all his data to.

He also dropped off the dodgy PC that looses it's BIOS settings after 2-3 weeks, so I've just tweaked the BIOS to boot to legacy OS (Windows 7 x64) which is now booting to and working fine, but still no clue as to why it will not hold the settings, google is returning nothing, the motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-H61M-DS2-DVI

 

[FremontPC]

Thanks for the update, d3v. As the problem doesn't seem to be widespread, sounds like it may just be a defective mobo.

 

[d3v]

Yes indeed. I'm going to ask him if I can keep hold of the machine, wait for it to drop it's BIOS settings (error reproduction) then maybe stick some bluetak putty or duct tape on to the cmos battery to press a better contact, then wait again to see if the error returns.

 

[mr m]

The only thing a modern "CMOS" battery does is keep the date and time current by energizing the RTC while the system is powered off. It is not needed to keep the various settings in the BIOS/UEFI chip anymore since mobo manufacturers replaced volatile ROM with non-volatile flash memory.

I would think that if you are losing more than just the date and time your chip is corrupt or the mobo is faulty and a new or better secured CR2032 wouldn't make a difference.

Good luck with this and keep us posted.

Oh yeah, try to flash the UEFI,

 

[FremontPC]

Yes indeed. I'm going to ask him if I can keep hold of the machine, wait for it to drop it's BIOS settings (error reproduction) then maybe stick some bluetak putty or duct tape on to the cmos battery to press a better contact, then wait again to see if the error returns.

Yeah, as Mr M says above, certainly can't hurt to nab the latest EFI from Gigabyte and give it a go. Could have been a bad flash/bad rev.

 

[d3v]

Hi there, do you mean the latest BIOS for the board? If so I have already flashed to the latest and made no difference. I have no idea about EFI, can you link me please.

 

[FremontPC]

Hmm. Not seeing any separate EFI downloads, perhaps they include any EFI updates as part of the BIOS update package..