Can CMOS Battery cause Powerup Issues

My son's Dell Inspiron was not powering up a few weeks ago, lights would flicker for a second...then nothing. I opend it up and checked all the wiring. Tried another battery, tried another power cord. Still did not power up. I then took out the CMOS battery and noticed it had some corrosion on it. I cleaned it off and tried cleaning thr motherboard as well. After I put the CMOS battery back in it powered up. I never expected this as I fetl that the CMOS battery would not affect power up. I then ordered a new CMOS battery just in case. Well his laptop would not power up again. I immediately just replaced the CMOS battery and it started up?

Does this make any sense or am I masking another problem with the motherboard?

Please advise
Paul

 

Seems odd, I've had a dead CMOS battery constantly boot me into the BIOS setup before allowing me to continue, but never that.

Mind you that was some years ago on a PC, and rather than buy an expensive battery (they were back then) I simply whacked 2 AAs in a pack and made a fashioned together a connector. Worked a treat and a whole lot cheaper to replace

 

I've never owned a Dell laptop that would not boot without a CMOS battery. Subsequently, I doubt this is an issue with the CMOS battery, but you never know; computers are pretty complex and the most random things can often cause 'em to fail.

 

You should still be able to boot without the CMOS battery. One of my notebooks had a broken CMOS battery holder and I was still able to use it until I sent it in to have the motherboard replaced.

 

As others have stated, the CMOS battery should not be keeping your system from booting. On several systems I've used, booting without the battery simply resets any BIOS options that you've changed, and resets the system clock, which can sometimes cause silly errors with licensed software.