PCTech Forums

Hi, i have been having this intermittent problem for quite some time now and have finaly decided to join a forum in the hope of finding a soloution, anyway enough prattaling on

Here`s the rub. Every time we have a power cut in the area OR i switch my pc off at the wall plug, when i try to restart it will just hang on the bios start up page? for about 20 mins and then finally go to the windows log in page.

It will do this for about the next 4-5 start ups and then seem fine.

So, is this a symptom of a dying/fualty CMOS battery or something else??

Thanks for any help in advance

even for a battery problem, 20 min is a bit extreme. Does the date and time stay set in cmos? Thats usually the first sign if a bad battery.

Hi, when it starts and loads windows the time is still correct.

Have now got a different pc in the last few days, so the old one`s has been sitting in a box for about three days, but had to switch back on yesterday to get some files from it, and weirdly it fired up straight away the only thing that was`nt plugged into it was the printer (an old lexmark all in one type) So maybe there was some form of driver fault for it

Anyway Thanks for the responce, i will try the old p.c. a few more times and see if it still boots up o.k. and then probably do a clean install of the o.s. and then donate it to a charity or somthing, as its not really worth selling on (its about 6 years old!!)

ah yes sometimes usb devices can cause issues but its typically things with flash drives, card readers and such. Printer may have built in card reader that would do that. If thats the case a solution would be to enter the bios and set the hdd as first boot device so it doesnt search usb channels.

Yeah, it has got a built in card reader, Cheers, and to think i had been puzzling over this problem for the last two to three years on and off!! (about the same lenght of time i have had the printer)

I guess the next time i have a similar problem i should start with the basics first e.g. unplug all external devices and add them back in one at a time untill the problem re-occurs. That way i won`t be scratching my head every time we get a powercut in my area.

Anyway thanks for the help

yea that would be good practice, if only i could remember to do it myself sometimes lol.

It seems that you have got a bad battery since you can't power your laptop with the battery only when suffering from a power cut . Can the battery work fine when your laptop sucessfully booted up? Just take a test and unplug in your ac adapter to let the battery work only. Or, take a second thought to buy a new replacement battery