Power supply issues

Jerry Robinson56 said:This right here is a dead giveaway that something is off with the CMOS battery—it could be a loose connection in the socket, or maybe the batteries are just old and worn out.
It really needs to sit above 3.2V (though honestly, it usually hangs on even at 3V) ... and of course, there's always the slim possibility the motherboard itself is acting up, though I wouldn't bet on that.
Usually, you can find an option right in the BIOS to check the battery voltage yourself.
Is it actually shutting down or resetting while you're in the middle of working? .. also, regarding what fadedorca66 mentioned

It isn't shutting down; it’s just being finicky during startup—exactly what I described. It doesn't reset either; everything else runs perfectly fine except for this one glitch.

In that specific scenario, we are looking at an issue exclusively involving the battery—unless, of course, there is a physical break in the copper trace between the motherboard and the BIOS memory. When the battery fails or the standby voltage drops too low, the BIOS loses its stored data and reverts to factory defaults. The fact that the system displays the current date and time is simply because the hardware is recognizing those parameters upon startup. When you seat the battery into the socket on the motherboard, I suggest rotating it slightly within the housing just to ensure we aren't dealing with a simple case of poor contact. Furthermore, you really ought to measure the battery voltage; if it has been sitting on a shelf for too long, it is likely drained.

Yeah, I've seen just about everything, honestly. Batteries shoved in the wrong way, that little CMOS clear jumper left sitting there, or even those annoying plastic films left on the negative side of a fresh battery... stuff like that.

wearymason4 said:Oh, believe me, I've seen it all—batteries installed upside down, that CMOS clear jumper left in the wrong position, or even just forgetting to peel the plastic film off the bottom of a brand-new battery... things like that.

🙂 Spot on, wearymason4. It’s entirely plausible that one of those trivial errors is exactly what we're dealing with here.

Why is this power supply thread over on Computer Peripheral? 🤔
Shouldn't it be here? 🤷

Jerry Robinson56 said:In this scenario, it’s almost certainly just the battery—unless there's some weird issue where the traces on the motherboard connecting to the BIOS memory are broken. When that battery dies, or if the voltage drops too low during standby, the BIOS loses its saved data and reverts back to factory defaults. You can tell because the system clock resets; the hardware knows what day it is, but it doesn't know the specific time. My advice? Pop a new battery in, but before you do, try rotating the current one in its socket just to make sure it isn't a simple case of poor contact. Also, definitely test the voltage on that battery—if it's been sitting on a shelf for a while, it might just be drained.

🙏🙏🙏 I actually tried spinning the CMOS battery around—just a little nudge—for a couple of days straight... and it worked! For the last two days, the PC has been booting up perfectly.

Thanks, thanks, thanks a million!!!

😵🎉🥱🙂🤣😵

Excellent... you articulated that quite well.