CMOS battery dead, lost settings, Windows won’t boot!
Q. Yo J.D……so my hoss of a Dell laptop (the one with a 20″ screen) seems to have bit it again…It was left unplugged for a couple of days and I think that internal battery was drained. So it will try and start windows, but then it crashes and starts the reboot process over…I can get into set up…do you know how I can fix that boot problem? -John
A. Howdy John. Yes, it sounds like your CMOS battery is dead and that your SATA mode may have reverted from ATA to AHCI. I know you used ATA mode when installing Windows, so now it will not boot because the correct drivers (for AHCI mode) are not present and thus you get a BSOD (blue screen of death). Here’s how to fix it:
1 Enter system setup
2 Press the up- and down-arrow keys to highlight Onboard Devices, and press <Enter>.
3 Press the up- and down-arrow keys to highlight SATA Operation, and press <Enter>.
4 Press the left- and right-arrow keys to highlight the option that specifies ATA (not AHCI)
(or you can txt me / email me / send screenshot at #4, listing your options and I will tell you which one to pick, or just try to follow step 4… I just don’t know the exact wording…)
5 Save settings and exit to reboot
You will hopefully be good to go then!
-JD
FOLLOWUP FROM JOHN:
WooHoo! That worked! I am back up and going again! Thanks so much for your help, it is good to have my 20 pound laptop back up and going! 🙂 -John
END:
You’re very welcome! -JD