[CLUE-Tech] Re: bios forcing shutdown?

[Jason S. Friedman]

A big thanks to everyone who posted on my question.  I was
a bit nervous, thinking I had junked my computer by
thrashing about with the BIOS.

I ended up using a combination of the advice provided.  I
removed the battery, pretended it was no big deal, and
powered up the machine.  The machine booted normally!  I
then powered down, re-inserted the battery, and the
machine still booted normally.  I did not need to do any
pretending on that second boot, by the way.

And, for the benefit of someone stumbling on this post
through Google, I should say I did not see any jumpers
near the battery, and my battery was silver in color and
about 85% of the size of a U.S. quarter.  The battery was
restrained by a small, springy clamp; I pushed aside the
clamp with my fingernail and tipped the computer on its
side and the battery fell out.
-----------------------------------

Most newer mainboards have a clear CMOS jumper you can use
to reset BIOS
to the default.  Normally, you short the jumper, power the
machine
(nothing will happen), move the jumper back, then power up
again. This
should give you the manufacturers default settings.  If
you can't find
that, remove the on board CMOS battery for a few minutes -
this should
have the same effect but is less graceful.

HTH,

-d

Jason S. Friedman wrote:

>I'm trying to load a new OS onto my PC.  The PC had a CD
>reader, and CD reader/writer, and a hard drive.  I put the
>CD in the CD reader and turned on the computer and the
>machine ignored the CD and booted the existing OS.  I
>turned the machine off, turned it back on, and brought up
>the bios menu with the intention of adjusting the setting
>that tells bios which device I want to boot from (though I
>was surprised it did not read from the CD reader
>initially).
>
>I must have adjusted something terribly wrong, because now
>when I boot my machine it comes on for a few seconds and
>then turns itself off!  I cannot even get to the bios
>screen in order to change the settings.