BIOS Settings--Where are they?

Hi,

It's time to change the battery in my Dell laptop. I have instructions from the net on how to do this. It says to go into BIOS (which I have successfully done) and write down the hard drive settings. My computer guy says I am looking for cylinders, heads, etc.

When I go into BIOS under drives, there is a list of drives that are numbered 0 through 4, but I don't know which one is supposed to be the hard (C) drive. Also I don't see anything about "cylinders, heads," etc. It just has some settings for On and Off which apparently enable and disable the drives.

Can someone help me find this? I tried Googling for the info but wasn't able to find a straightforward answer. Thanks!

 

Plodr,

Although you may be aware of issues with certain models I'm not, the replacement of the BIOS battery almost always only requires resetting the date and time.

I have never run into an issue replacing the BIOS battery that required information on drive cylinders, heads, etc. The only possible hangup I can see is - if the notebook has two internal hard drives installed - selecting which one is the boot ("C") drive.

If things get squirrelly after the BIOS battery is replaced, the OP can always choose "restore factory defaults" in the BIOS options.

Not arguing, just asking if I've been missing any potential issues when replacing BIOS batteries myself.

 

Hi,

To help clear things up, EquineLuvr can you give us a link to the instructions from the net you are trying to follow? That should be useful because I read this thread as you needing to replace the laptop battery not the little CMOS battery. Neither should need info like cylinders, head and sectors about your HD as far as I know.

 

I think the tech was nuts or trying to get you to use his services by giving you that info. I agree with gman unless this laptop is really old, even then...

 

I agree with augiedoggie.

What makes you think you have to replace the battery?
If it is your power battery, just remove it and the specs, part number, etc., should be on one side or the other. It should give you a DELL part number if you want to buy from DELL.
Google the DELL part number for an alternate supplier, or 2.

If your laptop is not keeping time, and date, then it is the internal battery. Very rarely does this happen, in my experience.

Hope this helps.

Bazza

 

Sadly it sounds like you you saw a mystic man trying to sell "cure all" of snake oil under the guise of a PC Technician. You have been visited by arguably the most persistent and "wise" geeks on this forum with arguably more than 50 years of IT experience combined, all very curious about the information requested.

I sincerely hope you didn't pay that person any MONEY and if so you should consider the BBB and ask the so called technician to state exactly what he means within this thread.

 

Hi guys,

Thanks for your replies.

My apologies. I meant to type desktop, not laptop. I don't even own a laptop! I was really, really tired when I posted that. Again, I am sorry for the confusion.

I talked to my guy again, and he said if I can't find the settings then it's probably on auto anyway (?) and not to worry about it.

My Dell is a Dimension 4700.

The link with the instructions is
http://www.pcnineoneone.com/text/slowclock.txt

Thanks!

 

OK, so a $3 CR2032 is what you need and your clock should be normal again.

 

Yes that type battery should be available at most large drugstores or supermarkets or Radio Shack.

You don't have to worry about writing down any settings. You just replace the battery and start up. It may ask you to hit F1 or F2 and stop on that screen. Just hit F2 and then choose exit without saving changes. Should go onto Windows and Windows will synchronize the time over the net.

(Some older Dells will start giving you a floppy seek error after a battery change so let us know if that happens and we can fix that.)