issue: at every boot, my BIOS prompts "boot as normal, or check settings"

[Member briandc]

Hi everyone,
on which occasions will the BIOS screen appear automatically and ask whether to boot as normal or to check settings?
I ask because this happened on my laptop today (Ubuntu Studio OS) and it has never happened before. I went into the set-up (I noticed that the system clock was set to zero) and selected the “User Default” boot settings, then exited and rebooted. Things seem fine again now. Was this some sort of auto-check?

brian

[Forum Admin dolphin_oracle]

Helpful

Up

0

::

my first thought is that some part of your bios was corrupted and your backup bios kicked in. that assumes your motherboard has one.

or

the clock resetting used to indicate a bios battery failure. do those things still have batteries? that would be another possiblity.

or

a power surge of some kind damaged your bios settings.

[Anonymous]

Helpful

Up

0

::

One of the PCs here (ASUS motherboard) “takes fits” following a sudden power outage.
It is attached to a UPS, but due to an extended outage here recently I was faced with wrestling it again.
At every powerup, forced to press F2 then Exit(no changes) in order for boot to proceed.

From memory (sheesh, I should tape a note to the side of the box):

bios coin cell backup battery is fine.
screen-by-screen wading through the settings screens I found nothing which had changed.
The solution, IIRC, was to change any-ol-setting (doesn’t matter which, or how insignificant) + exit(Save)
…then reboot and F2 again to revert the change + exit(Save)
and, upon the following (cold) reboot, things are back to “normal”

[Member briandc]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Interesting.. Mine is an ASUS too, and about 9-10 years old now. Since there is only one OS on it, I selected “User Default” for booting, thinking that it would *have* to select what I had set up previously. So far, so good! I guess time will tell..

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a power surge, since I connected the power cord to the outlet before I connected it to the computer. But what was strange, was that it powered on as soon as it was plugged in, without me pushing the power button!
Perhaps there was a process that was “unfinished” from the last power-off?? I have no idea about this one..

brian

[Member jdmeaux1952]

Helpful

Up

0

::

briandc wrote:

Interesting.. Mine is an ASUS too,
…since I connected the power cord to the outlet before I connected it to the computer. But what was strange, was that it powered on as soon as it was plugged in, without me pushing the power button!
..brian

That is your clue. Turned on when power connected. It appears that the laptop battery was drained OR it was never turned off. Some ASUS mb act flakey after the battery is completely dead, until the battery is fully charged.

1- Dirty power switch on laptop. It happens. Use contact cleaner with no residue.
2- Bad power connector. I’ve seen this happen from the odd angle the cords pull. Some are a simple unsolder/resolder, while others require complete disassembly.
3- Best case is a bad cord for power.

Just something to check.

NOTE” This is a common problem with older laptops.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by jdmeaux1952.

The Kernel has my back covered.
AMD desktop FX-8320 ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0 nVidia GeForce 730 GT 8 Gb memory
MSI laptop S6000 i5-460M 4 Gb ram

A great mind is something to get terribly wasted.
LRU# 563815

[Member briandc]

Helpful

Up

0

::

{ snipped }
PSA: unnecessarily quoting the ENTIRE prior post is bad form

I don’t know if this helps, but the laptop battery has not been used for a long time. In fact, I’m not sure where I put it! 🙂
I don’t use the battery just because it keeps the computer cooler. The charging really warmed it up! And, I don’t need to use the battery, since I’m always where there’s an outlet. I just prefer doing things that way. Also because I don’t have to worry about battery levels going low, etc.

[Member briandc]

Helpful

Up

0

::

The problem came up again this morning: as soon as I plugged it in, it powered on, with the same 2 options: F1 to use user defaults, or F2 to do a SETUP. So I just pressed F1.
Perhaps it is indeed the BIOS battery, or similar..

So I guess all of this boils down to one question: will I be able to continue using this laptop without problems, in spite of this BIOS issue? (Or is it possible to have the BIOS battery replaced? If so, will I have to reinstall the OS?)

In the end, it’s a reliability concern I’m having.

brian

[Member fatmac]

Helpful

Up

0

::

If you’re lucky, you will see your battery through one of the panels underneath, if not it may be under the keyboard, & if you’re unlucky it will have to be stripped to change it. (Usually a CR2032 button cell.)

Linux (& BSD) since 1999

[Anonymous]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Visit the manufacturer’s site }} support pages. Step-by-step documentation specific to your PC model may be available.
For general howto, check youtube videos.

reliability concern

In the absence of a battery, if the bios is reverting to “default settings” at each poweroff…
aside from the extra “Esc to continue” keypress (or F1 or whatever) do you even care? (If you haven’t tweaked/customized any bios settings, probably not)

That same battery powers the onboard RTC (real-time clock). Without a working battery, you might notice the time/date has reverted to 12:00:00 1/1/2000 ~~ or might not notice (during boot, many systems callout to NTP timeserver and sync onboard date/time).

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Having replaced bios batteries in old laptops myself. In case you are clueless , Link

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Member briandc]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Thanks everyone for these extra tips, all good btw!
I’ll do a bit of checking around and see if it’s something I can replace myself or if I need to find someone who can do it for me.
It’s good to know that I can still go on using this particular laptop, even if I don’t get the battery replaced immediately. 🙂

brian

[Member fatmac]

Helpful

Up

0

::

No problem, I’ve been using my old Advent laptop for a couple of years with a dead CMOS battery & a useless laptop battery, it still works fine plugged into the mains, via the charger cable. 🙂

Linux (& BSD) since 1999

[Anonymous]

Helpful

Up

0

::

This topic in MX Linux forum mentions a potential problem that can occur when the battery is weak/dead:
Superblock last mount time in the future. (less than a day)

[Author]

Posts