Have I Fixed My POST Problem?

[Vern1961]

Last few days the old potato has become a bit temperamental. Whenever I powered on from cold, things would whir for a couple of seconds, before stopping the restarting and dumping me in the BIOS screen. Which of course is useless with a cordless mouse!

A bit of Google Fu predicted all sorts of doom and gloom, everything from the motherboard about to die to borked Windows update, and about to get the begging bowl out to the wife so I can go on OCUK or a competitor and build myself a new box. However a last ditch bit of searching pointed to the CMOS battery could be dead or losing power, so I changed that with a new CR2032. First boot still put me into BIOS but a subsequent cold start has loaded me into Win 10 without issues.

A health check on the C Drive came back okay and once the PC was running everything is stable.

So just wondering what else could cause a POST stall and recover or have I nailed the problem? (That said i still need to change the PC at some time in the next few months for something a bit more up to date).

 

[Vern1961]

Well fingers crossed, since changing the battery I have had four successful POST's so looks like that was the problem.

As stated system is an old potato - Z87K mobo with an I7 4770 CPU, 24Gb RAM, three mech hard drives (total 2.5 Tb) a DVD drive and a GTX1650 (4Gb). And a 450w PSU. Without checking my account at the retailer, I'm guessing it's at least 10 years old now so the battery has done quite well, given the same type in our kitchen scales lasts less than a year.

Very much needs replacing as even with the various tricks and Rufus it doesn't run Win 11 very well (tried and reverted to 10 twice) but at lease now the boot issue is sorted I have more wiggle room to organise a replacement box.

 

[Vern1961]

Two more successful posts today so feeling quite relieved.

I'm still using the PC for gaming and it still does that quite well. Some newer titles I have to run at 1440p including the Dovetail Train Sim World, but that's more down to DTG poorly optimising their work with UE4.

I have certainly toyed with the idea of just putting a slightly better GPU in there (my PSU should just about power a RTX3050, not sure about a 5050) and as suggested a SSD drive to replace the current C: drive to squeeze another year or two out of it, though that depends on getting the Win 10 Extended Security offer to finally appear. As regards Win 11, both times it took okay with Rufus but after a couple of days got very sluggish hence the decision to return to 10.

 

[Vern1961]

Sounds like the 5050 would be too much for my PSU, then. It also gets to the point where buying a few components might just be better use towards an all new box.

Anyhow just had another successful POST so definitely all sorted. First time I've ever had to change a mobo battery in 30 years of PC ownership (well the first was was actually leased from Radio Rentals, an old 486SX!).