I recently noticed that whenever I turn the power back on at the wall socket after having it off, my PC powers on by itself without me hitting the power button. Is it just a weird quirk or something more serious? The BIOS shows a message with error 162, indicating that the system options are not set and suggests that the onboard battery might need replacing. I'm using an HP Compaq Elite 8300 SFF. After pressing F1, it boots right into Linux Mint, which is my primary operating system, and everything works perfectly fine once I'm logged in. This issue seems to happen only after a complete power outage. From what I've gathered, it sounds like a dead CMOS/RTC battery could be the culprit, causing the BIOS to reset while the system is configured to turn on automatically after power restoration. Does that sound accurate, and would swapping out the CR2032 battery likely solve my problem? Thanks!
1 Answer
Yeah, it definitely sounds like a dead CMOS battery. Replacing it should fix the error you're seeing, so go ahead and change it to see if the problem stops happening.
I swapped out the battery, but I'm still facing the same issue. Now I see a '161 - Real-Time Clock Power Loss' message along with the '162 - System Options Not Set' when I power it on. After hitting F1 a couple of times, it boots into Linux Mint.
Thanks for confirming! I really appreciate the advice.