"Power On Self Test" question

Ok, heres my issue. I am on my second new laptop and finding a similar problem.

Heres what happens.
When the laptop has been off for a period of time (longer than a half hour or so), upon power up, the computer quickly beeps, and the boot up screen that showed for a second before the beep, re-appears as if it is rebooting itself a second after it boot up to begin with. This is the screen that says "to enter setup, push F2".

Now every time I get this beep and wierdness, which is when its been off for a while, the time and the date reset back to Dec 31 2001.

As I said, Im on my second new laptop. Seems hard to believe it would be 2 diff CMOS batteries.

Anyone know about the Power On Self Test thing? Im guessing its related. This all happens in about a second or so upon powering up.

please help

 

That is an interesting problem, especially to carry over to a new laptop. I had a similar problem on an Old Sager Laptop I recieved as a toy from my job. In that case, the CMOS battery was the problem.

I would consider just trying to replace the CMOS battery anyway, for the sake of eliminating it as a probable cause. Then check for BIOS updates for that laptop. It may help us to know exactly what kind of laptop you are working on as well. There arent many other things on a laptop that I could think o that would cause a problem like that.



Poseign

 

Ive got an Alienware 9750. The first one arrived DOA - well, it powered, but didnt boot, no bios, no HD spin, nothing. Sent it back, replaced motherboard, then got it back and the time and date would reset every time it was off for a while. Toyed with Vista time and date settings, nothing changed. But this would happen when turned off for more than a couple hours. The system would beep on bootup, and time and date reset. They opted to build me a new machine, I just got it yesterday. It shows up with time and date reset - but no date - fair enough, maybe just cause its brand new. I set date and time, and after it was off for a while, it did the beep reset thing. I went into the bios and checked it out after resetting time and date again. Bios showed my change.

Now I should say that last night I let the battery drain out, and booted it this morning, and it DIDNT reset, but it gave me the "your computer ran out of power, stuff was saved, do you want to load windows, blah blah....." So I dont know if it didnt reset cause of that issue (not being powered down correctly.

I just cant believe its gonna do it on 2 diff new laptops. I ordered a whole new computer/ new order and everything, so it seems hard to believe they used the same parts from my old laptop, but this is kind of crazy. Maybe it was a fluke and it only did it yesterday. Its off right now and Ill power it up later to test.



(sigh)