TIL a bad CMOS battery can mimic a dead motherboard and I wasted $80 on a replacement board before trying the $3 fix

Spent 4 hours swapping parts and reseating RAM on a 2012 Optiplex before I finally swapped the CR2032 and it booted right up has anyone else been burned by a stupid simple failure like this taking forever to diagnose?

2 comments

2 Comments

rivera.henry5d ago

I saw a video from some repair guy where he was talking about how many boards get tossed because people don't check the $3 battery first. It's wild how something so tiny can make a computer act like a brick. I had a Dell laptop that would shut down if you moved it a certain way, spent a week thinking it was a loose connection or bad solder joint. Turned out the battery was barely holding a charge and the movement was just knocking it out. Felt like a total clown when I figured it out.

abby_king225d ago

That "acts like a brick" part is spot on... people don't realize how much a bad battery can mess with everything. I've seen machines act possessed over something that simple. It's always the cheap fix that nobody checks first.