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Does a PC have to have a functioning battery to enable it to recognize the drives?

Mine crashed on reboot and then would not recognize any of the drives. After many hours and much agony, I removed the battery & disconnected the power (to clear the cmos) then hooked everything back up and it returned to normal. I believe the battery was not making good contact. I know the battery retains the cmos info when powered down, but if its out ,will the cmos loose the ability to recognize the drives even if the AC power is on?

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2655, old post ID:21817

Yes and no. The drive information (cylinders, heads etc) is stored in the cmos and it defers from drive to drive, and size. So the only way for it to boot is that it has this information, so with a dead cmos battery you need to go in the bios and reset this information (usually doing an autodetect will do the trick). I had a PC that I had to do that every time I turned it on.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2655, old post ID:21818

I understand that, but

with the battery out & the CMOS set on automatic (for drive recognition)

it still would not boot up.

Each drive came up "not installed".

As soon as I reinstalled the battery & pushed the contacts down really hard,

it recognized all the drives & I've had no problem since.

It has a PC CHips motherboard.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2655, old post ID:21844

Yeah since you need to reset it each time without shutting off the computer.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2655, old post ID:21846

The thing is that with the CMOS set on automatic & the battery in it recognizizes the drives

if I take the battery out it won't recognize the drives.

What I'm trying to figure out & never heard of is:

Why , when you have AC power on

do you need the battery in place on order for the Bios to recognize the drives?

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2655, old post ID:21861

The default is probably to not detect automaticly, so that's why even though you set it there, the battery is dead so it uses default settings when it boots.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2655, old post ID:21868

I know we're beating this to death-BUT

The default is to detect automaticly, as this is what the CMOS defaults to when you yank all the power.

I can set the bios to autodetect the drives.

When the battery is out it detects nothing & says "not installed"

When I reinstall the battery, it detects them fine.

So, the question still is why does the CMOS )or Bios) need a battery to detect the drives when AC is present?

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2655, old post ID:21881

Hmm I never had that proble with my situation but maybe your bios is different. So I guess the best route to go is to just replace it with a new battery. From what I heard as long as you have the right voltage your safe so if you can't find the same kind just get one with the right voltage.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:2655, old post ID:21882