Do you mean a bad BIOS chip? Then your laptop might not turn on.
Do you mean a bad BIOS chip? Then your laptop might not turn on.
Hello everyone, here is my laptop: a Dell Latitude that is about nine years old. Two or three weeks ago, I started having trouble when trying to turn on the computer. If I press the power button, the light comes on for maybe ten seconds but then goes off with nothing else happening. There was no boot up, no fan spinning, and no back light showing up at all.
I tried taking out one of my two RAM sticks and testing it in the other spot, then switched which port I plugged into to see if that helped. Nothing worked. Finally, I took out the CMOS battery (the coin size thing) and put it back in. That fixed the problem—I successfully booted up the computer. Once everything was working normally after booting, I could turn it into sleep mode and come back online without any issues.
When I shut down completely or tried to hibernate, sometimes I got the same no-boot error, but sometimes it would actually start up as normal. Even though unplugging and replugging that CMOS battery every time fixed it when it wouldn't boot, the problem seemed to get worse over time. Recently, I had to turn off the computer because I was traveling, and now I simply cannot get it to turn on at all after trying many times. At first, I thought a dead or dying CMOS battery was the issue and bought a new one. Nothing happened.
I assumed Amazon sent me a faulty replacement battery, but I just tested both batteries with a multimeter right now, and they are both showing 3 volts as they should be. (Also note that the computer will not even turn on if the CMOS is completely unplugged.) Now I am thinking my BIOS chip might be dead—I don't see why else I would get boot problems but then suddenly work perfectly fine once I manage to start up successfully.
I also considered a bad motherboard, but it seemed less likely because I wouldn't have had normal operation after the reboot if the problem was with the board instead of the BIOS chip. Is this most probably that my BIOS chip is failing, or could there be something else? Thanks so much for your help!
Does the laptop work fine whether it gets power from the wall or just the battery? Maybe there is a risk of something going wrong in either case? At nine years old, if this laptop has been used often, it's much more likely that there is a problem with the main board, one of the smaller boards underneath it, or even the very first power source than anything else like the BIOS chip. But no matter which part is bad—whether it's the BIOS code or any other piece of hardware—it doesn't really matter because fixing each one individually would cost way more than keeping the whole thing working unless you can find an exact same laptop with a completely different problem for a price that is way too low to be worth buying. Even if this was a very cheap, modern model like a Chromebook, it probably wouldn't work as well as anything else on the market right now. I cannot say for sure, but I'm pretty sure the BIOS code in these units isn't easy to replace without special tools and a lot of repair knowledge. Knowing the specific model number along with the service tag might give you some extra details about this device, but it probably won't change how things work. The main point is that even if you figure out which part is broken, fixing it will likely mean replacing the whole main board, and that is usually not a good deal. Not when there are new or refurbished options available for maybe 150 to 200 dollars, possibly less in some cases. You might try re-flashing the BIOS with the newest version if your current one looks old or faded over time. I know it's risky because sometimes flashing breaks things, but I've seen BIOS codes become corrupted and get fixed when people managed to do that before. Still, if this thing is working now as long as you remove and put back the small battery holding the memory settings, you should probably just give up on trying to fix it alone rather than taking a chance of losing everything. If this device is important to your life, then maybe it's time to look at buying something else instead.
Look at the tiny metal bumps on the motherboard for signs of rust (oxidation) or if the battery isn't snug enough against the board. If these things are wrong, your CMOS settings might be messed up.
Thank you for your thorough reply. The problem is the same regardless of whether I am running on the battery or have the battery disconnected and am running on AC. I believe the BIOS chip is soldered on (I don't see anything that looks like a socketed chip), and I'm definitely not experienced enough to replace that. It's not so much an issue of money--mostly, I'd like to repair it if I can because I enjoy toying with computers. I found a replacement motherboard on eBay for about $50, and I wouldn't mind dropping that much for the fun of seeing if I can get it to work, even if that's not necessarily the most economical thing to do. Does this sound like a halfway sensible thing to you, or is it probably pointless given the risk it may actually be a component board? (The motherboard I'm looking at has a slightly better processor, but seems to have the same physical arrangement of ports and, like my own motherboard, is labeled as a "Vauao la-9591p"--I wouldn't think an extremely similar motherboard would create a compatibility problem, but let me know if you think otherwise.) A few other points, which probably don't change much, but I'll mention in case it's important. It's a Latitude E7440, service tag GBQWH12. I did a dual install of Ubuntu (alongside Windows) relatively recently. I used an installer, and I guess that would have changed my bios to allow me to select one OS or the other at startup. Didn't really end up using Ubuntu, so I got rid of it. Didn't think this was related, since my problems didn't start particularly close in time to the Ubuntu install and because the BIOS has been reset due to the CMOS being removed numerous times, but you'd know better than I. Despite many attempts and CMOS unpluggings/repluggings, the computer won't boot at all for the last few days, so I can't try reflashing the bios (unless there's some way to do this without achieving boot or physically removing the chip and then resoldering that I'm unaware of). If I get it to boot, I'll probably just keep it running and never shut it down, then try reflashing bios or replacing the motherboard only when I'm completely ready to buy another computer if I brick it. I agree that it's probably about time to face the music and start looking for a new computer. But I wouldn't mind trying to breathe one last breath of life into this one.
The little battery chip inside my laptop isn't a free coin change. It's just a battery sitting on top of some plastic with a wire sticking out of it to go into the motherboard. I think the computer is getting power from that chip because when I checked the voltage, I measured right on the board while the chip was plugged in (and didn't have my main charger attached). Thanks for checking out!
So what was the voltage? The CMOS bat gave out 3 volts. I don't think a normal non-rechargeable battery could last if it leaked current to the motherboard. What I guess is leftover static electricity, and that can make the laptop not turn on even with a full battery plugged in. Check if your laptop has a power light turned on or blinking... No matter what the LED says try this first: take the charger out and hit the power button for a minute. The light should go off... wait a few minutes and see if you can start it up. If that doesn't work, remove both the battery and the charger, then hit the power button again for a full minute. Put the battery back on and try turning it on. If that fails too, take out the charger, battery, and the little CMOS one, and hit the button once more for a minute. Put them all back in and give it another shot... plug in the charger if you still can't turn it on. At this point I think the tiny power cell might have a bad connection, or maybe it's a rechargeable model that needs to be swapped out.
He already changed the CMOS battery but it didn't work. Guess you missed that part or skipped over it entirely. It's very easy, I've done this a lot myself. Taking out the charger and batteries and draining all the power by holding the power button for one to three minutes while those things are removed isn't the worst plan. Then put them back together with a fresh CMOS battery just to be sure there might be some weirdness from the old one, and check what happens. But I think this is probably a BIOS ROM problem or something wrong with the motherboard or power board. To me, 50 bucks for a laptop motherboard that's nine years old is way too much, but since it's not my money, you can decide on your own. On my side, I'd look for an entire machine with a broken screen for around that price so if it's the power board and not the motherboard, we don't have to buy another part separately. And that's only if you really want to spend time on this thing. Personally, I probably just would sell THIS unit as parts like others did and move on. But I totally get why you want to fix things so you'll let that be up to you.