Thanks.
> My understanding was that if CMOS was dead, so long as the PC could boot with default BIOS settings, it'd boot.
That was mine too, but I found enough results to suggest it was worth swapping the battery, and I thought it was a simple task.
Given I haven't changed the battery before, it's at least 15 years old - well past the 10 year lifespan on the pack of CR2032s I have.
Although I might have read that it was removal of the battery to reset a corrupted BIOS which was the solution, in which case merely disconnecting then reconnecting might be enough - though even if that works a spare seems a good idea.
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> I assume you've done the reseating dance, pulling out and reseating every connector, SATA cable, RAM card etc.
It's a large notebook form factor and I have limited space, so that's a complicated dance, and not one I was willing to even contemplate last night.
It's not the hard-drives: they all work fine in an external dock, and it doesn't boot with them removed.
I'll start removing/reseating other bits after I've had some lunch, and see if that reveals any further clues.
There's three RAM chips, all in awkward many-screwed places, but a single bad chip would be 12->8 which would be annoying but probably not a disaster.
If it's graphics card, they seems to be in region of £100..200 on Ebay - and hopefully, if it is that, I can find a compatible replacement and it doesn't trigger the Windows Activation bollocks... :/ |