For the past few weeks, my PC has failed to display anything after restarting. I didn't change any hardware, settings, or components before this started happening. I discovered that shorting the motherboard's CLRTC pins lets me enter the BIOS, after which I have to force it to boot into Windows. I need to repeat this process every time I start the computer, although everything works normally once Windows loads. Could the CMOS battery or motherboard be causing this? The system clock still keeps the correct time, so I'm not sure whether the battery is actually bad.
2 Answers
In the BIOS, choose the option to load optimized or factory defaults, save the changes, and reboot. That can clear a bad configuration without manually shorting the pins. Since you’ve already tried resetting the defaults and it didn’t help, a new CMOS battery and BIOS update would be the next reasonable checks before considering a motherboard fault.
Shorting the CLRTC pins clears the motherboard’s CMOS settings, so having to do that before every successful boot suggests the board isn’t retaining or applying its configuration correctly. Try replacing the CMOS battery and loading BIOS defaults. If that doesn’t help, update or reflash the BIOS, since corrupted firmware can cause this kind of behavior. If the problem continues, the motherboard itself may be failing.
The system clock is still correct. Could the CMOS battery still be the problem even if it’s keeping time?
I already tried restoring the default BIOS settings, but it didn’t change anything.