TSGL: PC has died ...

[Russell W. Coover]

One way to check the CMOS battery is to shut off all internet access for a
day or two and see if the machine has lost any time. If, over this period,
it has lost at least a minute, your battery should be replaced. A smaller
loss (such as 30 seconds) may indicate your battery has weakened and may
need to be replaced soon. Prior to the test, be sure the computer clock
shows the correct time by synchronizing it with a time server. 

The reason for shutting off internet access is to make sure the operating
system, or some program you may have added to the machine, is not able to
synchronize the clock during the test. 

If you need to add software to synchronize your clock, I suggest Dimension 4


http://www.thinkman.com/dimension4/

or TClockEx 

http://www.download.com/TClockEx/3000-2347_4-10637570.html?tag=lst-2

Dimension 4 is fairly basic and you can use various time servers across the
world. TClockEx will do pretty much the same thing, and allow you to modify
your System Tray so that not only the time shows, but, if you wish, day and
date. Both are good. My preference is Dimension 4.

 

Russ Coover

-----Original Message-----
From: list-bounces at tsgserver.com [mailto:list-bounces at tsgserver.com] On
Behalf Of Tilman Brandl
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 7:07 AM
To: Tech Support Guy Mailing List
Subject: TSGL: PC has died ...

Hi,

just a question. Recently I've had severe problems (probably Java-related)
on my machine (XP Pro SP2). I've done a non-destructive repair which seemed
to solve the problems. But then, it started to not *reboot* frequently, when
I tried to .. I switched it off for a while, switched off the main switch in
the back as well, tried the reset switch (which I believe does work), etc.
To no avail.

Today I swapped the system HDD into my older backup machine, which I'm using
now. This worked almost flawlessly, as expected. But I would still like to
get the main PC to work again, at least as a (third) backup.

I've tried a different XP system drive from my backup-machine, didn't change
a thing, didn't start up or show any signs of a Bios etc.. 

Now, of course there could be several different reasons for this. From my
experiments I guess it must be the hardware - except the HDDs which seem
fine. I've got a new PSU recently, nothing else was changed....

Question: Could a dying CMOS battery be behind all this? I've had the
impression that when I left the PC sit for a while shut off e.g. overnight,
it was easier to get it to work. Might be the battery did recover some ...?
But how ?

Any ideas on this?
(I've ordered a new machine meanwhile)

Tilman
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