[The one]

work did it the battary removal way also i asked them why and my boss who is now a network manager preveously a technician wasnt actually aware of the cmos jumper as alot of older boards dont even feature them so u will find that the battary removal method is actually used alot wider then one would supose.

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i reckion u r both correct in your own ways but if some1 is not confident and has little or no knowlege on that particular motherboard then what could be simpler then pulling out a battary and removing cable from psu, even a novice cant mess up, where as messsing with jumpers can be deadly so all in all for the less advance user removing power cable and battary is prefered method.

Actually, it is possible to mess up the battery method - eg, if the battery is reinserted the wrong way up for one. As for messing with jumpers, most boards now are jumperless (with the exception of the clear cmos jumper & one or two others). As the clear cmos jumper only needs to be moved along one pin for about 30 seconds then back again, its unlikely that the user is going to forget where to return the jumper to in the space of half a minute. This method also involves far less contact with the motherboard & therefore less danger of static damage etc.

work did it the battary removal way also i asked them why and my boss who is now a network manager preveously a technician wasnt actually aware of the cmos jumper as alot of older boards dont even feature them so u will find that the battary removal method is actually used alot wider then one would supose.

The fact that your boss has never even heard of the clear cmos jumper hardly inspires confidence in his technical abilities. Personally, in the 10 years I have spent building & repairing computers, I have only ever come across one post-486 motherboard that didn't appear to have either a clear cmos jumper or dip switch. In fact, a lot of older boards (notably the 386s etc) actually had the cmos battery soldered to the board & therefore was not removable.

However, we are starting to stray off topic here, so I suggest that we get back to concentrating on Morpheus's problem. Thank you

[Samm]

i reckion u r both correct in your own ways but if some1 is not confident and has little or no knowlege on that particular motherboard then what could be simpler then pulling out a battary and removing cable from psu, even a novice cant mess up, where as messsing with jumpers can be deadly so all in all for the less advance user removing power cable and battary is prefered method.

Actually, it is possible to mess up the battery method - eg, if the battery is reinserted the wrong way up for one. As for messing with jumpers, most boards now are jumperless (with the exception of the clear cmos jumper & one or two others). As the clear cmos jumper only needs to be moved along one pin for about 30 seconds then back again, its unlikely that the user is going to forget where to return the jumper to in the space of half a minute. This method also involves far less contact with the motherboard & therefore less danger of static damage etc.

work did it the battary removal way also i asked them why and my boss who is now a network manager preveously a technician wasnt actually aware of the cmos jumper as alot of older boards dont even feature them so u will find that the battary removal method is actually used alot wider then one would supose.

The fact that your boss has never even heard of the clear cmos jumper hardly inspires confidence in his technical abilities. Personally, in the 10 years I have spent building & repairing computers, I have only ever come across one post-486 motherboard that didn't appear to have either a clear cmos jumper or dip switch. In fact, a lot of older boards (notably the 386s etc) actually had the cmos battery soldered to the board & therefore was not removable.

However, we are starting to stray off topic here, so I suggest that we get back to concentrating on Morpheus's problem. Thank you

[The one]

hmm i fail to see how u can without alot of force put the battary in the wrong way and as for esd (electro static discharge) if u are sensible u will earth urself properly u would use anti static equipment or simply earth yourself, ive also asked a number of people and it seems that a large range of companies workers that just have 1 regular supplier for all there workstations have little or no use for the cmos jumper as it is more often than not present, i have asked alot of people in those enviroments, and as for the cmos jumper being the only one present on the board, that is the biggest load of rubbish i ever heard. you often have a fsb jumper, a jumper that selects whether to connect the front audio or rear audio, sata enable\disable, need i go on?

[Samm]

as for the cmos jumper being the only one present on the board, that is the biggest load of rubbish i ever heard. you often have a fsb jumper, a jumper that selects whether to  connect the front audio or rear audio, sata enable\disable, need i go on?

I believe what I actually said was :
"most boards now are jumperless (with the exception of the clear cmos jumper & one or two others)"

The one or two others commonly being USB power & keyboard power. Just to prove a point, I have checked a random selection of modern motherboards & listed exactly which jumpers each one has. I have not included the front panel audio in this because although it does use 2 jumpers, that only applies when you want to disable the front panel audio & redirect it to the rear audio ports.

abit AN7 : usb pwr, keybrd pwr, clear cmos
abit KV7 : usb pwr, keybrd pwr, clear cmos
abit nf7/nf7-s : usb pwr, keybrd pwr, clear cmos
abit sg-71 : bios write protect, clear cmos
asus a8v deluxe : keybrd pwr, usb pwr, clear cmos
asus k8n-e deluxe : usb pwr, clear cmos

Although there are still boards you can buy that do provide an FSB/cpu clock jumper & sata enable jumper, the majority of modern boards do not have these as the cpu clock & sata presence are either auto detected or manually configured in the bios setup instead. Please double check the manuals for the motherboards listed above, in case you think I'm making this up!

BTW, the motherboards listed above just happen to be the first ones I picked at random, they were not specially selected due to there lack of jumpers.

[The one]

mmm i dont wanna get into a debait about this but my gigabyte ga n400 pro 2 has a fair few jumpers, my asus board which i cant remembet he model off hand also has a few jumpers, as for abit i wouldnt know as i dont use abit, i know pc chips use a fair few, from the limited experiance i have with em epox boards tend to
aswell, ur examples are pretty much floored by the mear fact that u have given aload of boards by just 2 manufactorers, but still this is getting nowhere if everyone agreed on everything it would be a boring place, so well just agree to disagree on the original question of which is the easiest way from a novices point of view, to reset the cmos.

[Samm]

OK, I think we can drop the subject now! The reason for only 2 manufacturers was because I simply worked my way through the first bunch of motherboard manuals I had (which are in alphabetical order) on the PC.

[WhatThe]

Actually, it is possible to mess up the battery method - eg, if the battery is reinserted the wrong way up for one

LOL

[WhatThe]

Hi there, I'm James the fellow who reccommended this method at work

The purpose of removing the machine from mains power and removing the CMOS battery is two-fold :

(a) To allow the mainboard to drain of residual charge, including the 3V/1.5V/CMOS power rails that are always-on; even when the machine is "turned off".

(b) To reset the CMOS contents. This is not really the main aim, but a side-effect ot the above process.

If you have a machine that regularly needs this treatment it is likely that mainboard capacitors or other (mainboard) components are dying. In other circumstances, where an action such as removing RAM with the machine "off" but still connected to mains power causes a POST failure, this process will generally restore a successfull POST.

Thanks

J

Edited by WhatThe, 06 September 2005 - 02:55 AM.