CMOS/BIOS Problems

Hey Everyone.

I have been having a problem with my computer for about a week now.

Problem I'm having has to do with the CMOS. I took my computer apart to start the mod on the frame so I can do the heatsink MOD that "some guy" had did.

I'm very computer savy so I did everything right when taking it apart. I took the CMOS battery out just to eliminate any possibility of there being any power on the MB.

I put everything back together and go to boot up, I get the beep as if the ram was installed properly. I double check RAM, everything was fine. Booted again and didn't get beeps but the screen was cycling threw all basic colors for about 30 secs then shuts down.

I rebooted again and it booted fine. I went into BIOS first to set clock knowing it would reset.

I boot into windows and everything seems ok untill i check my notification icon down by the clock and there are empty spaces where there should be an icon. The spot is filled as if there is an icon there but you can't see it or actually interface with it. For the icons you can see, some work while most of them don't. Also settings for web pages were gone like if I deleted my cookies and history.

So I tried googling everyway I could imagine and all I ever see is change CMOS. I know for a fact that isn't the problem but I did change it to eliminate that as well.

I also re-installed windows 7 onto a spare hard drive but I still had problems.

Also when I first booted up after the changing CMOS battery everything worked fine untill I rebooted the comp and it went back to a reset clock and same problems within windows.

Sorry this is soooooo long but I wanted to make sure I told you guys everything that I have done so far and the symptoms I am experiencing.

If you do read this whole thing I want to thank you now.

Looking forward to any suggestions.



Forgot to add system specs:

m11xr2 i7 U640
8GB Ram

 

With all this brain power here you guys have nothing?

Could be becuase I've already exhausted everything to try.

I only have about 20 days left on my warrantee so I guess I will call Dell today and see what they say.

 

Hi tecrp7,
Just to not make you feel alone here, i thought i'd throw in my opinion.
And yes, while I read your whole story, i didn't go searching for the "some guy" heatsink instructions, so while I'm not really sure what you needed to touch/modify, I'd be really curious if a bios update would do anything at all.

I would think at least it should reset/update the software enough to properly talk with windows again.
Now I'd really tend to blame this on a hardware oops. (mal-seated chip on the cmos side, clipped pin, etc) BUT, assuming you did the whole procedure properly and nothing got borked in the process, let's modify/reset the software...
At the least, grab the same BIOS revision you've got now and let it do an "upgrade". Couldn't hurt if you're still within the 21 days.
Good luck.

 

Thanks Mighty,

That's one thing I forgot to mention as well. I did try going up and down a few times with BIOS A4 and A3 nVidia mod.

The heatsink mod consist of taking the whole comp apart. Its not a big deal, Ive taking this thing apart to upgrade the thermal paste. Its pretty stright forward.

I was grounded and was using an anti static pad on a test bench.

So its just mind boggling cuz the time still drifts and it drifts dramtically. I use a clock screen savor and use my comp as a large clock so I can see it clearly at night. And lets just say I woke up one time and I thought I was screwed cuz of the drift time.

Thanks again for chiming in. I think I will see what Dell says.

 

Sounds like a problem with the motherboard tecrp7 - the same problems occur with different software, different batteries and it is doubtful you managed to replicate the same error during reassembly every time you did it.

Good luck with Dell support

 

you could always try my recovery guide to reflashing a bricked m11x?

 

Thanks for the suggestion ajslay.

But I haven't actually bricked my computer so I am not sure if I am going to try that right now.

I do have an update.

The BIOS clock seems to hold its time as long as I don't adjust the clock in windows wether its manually or automatically.

However, when I set the BIOS time and then boot, my clock is off by 6 hours and 12 min and the date is off by 6 days. So obviously I have to adjust the clock. Once I do that BIOS will reset to 00:00:00 and some date in April of 2010.

Now I also have tried to adjust clock in the BIOS to correspond with the amount it is off by when I set it right. When I do this the clock will be set at that time I set in BIOS. A little odd.

So when I put the correct time it doesnt't like it but when its the wrong time it doesn't care.