Internal Battery?
 

Went away for 5 days with PC, Router etc switched off at the wall socket. On startup after hols, PC thought it was Feb 2003, wrong time and 'Caps Lock' 'beep' had switched itself off.

Could these be caused by the internal battery being on its way out and is there any way of checking this?

If you take said battery out to replace it, will the PC 'forget' things?

Dell Dimension PC running Win Xp SP3.

Any advice gratefully received.

Cheers
mcdhu

Could be. You don't say which Dimension you have, but the battery tends to be a CR2032. If you take the battery out, it will forget the date. It may forget anything between nothing and everything, depending on the motherboard model. I don't know for Dell. You may want to write down any non-standard settings you've made in BIOS, if any.

But yes, it's probably the battery, and it's probably easier to replace it ($4) than test it. The date is a bit of an odd one though.

Thanks Bushfiva. It's a Dell Dimension 4600 delivered in Jan 04, 80GB Hard Drive, Intel Pentium 4 2.66GHz Processor NVidia GeForce FX 5200 Video card.

I'll have a search in the Dell website for how to do it.

Cheers
mcdhu

Oooh, first hit on Google: Documentation. What helpful people those Dell guys are :-)

Looks like the battery's going to be near the bottom of the case, so accessible unless you've got a long card in that bottom slot.

Nice One!!

Recording the system setup appears , to a novice like me, quite a faff!

I'll set aside a day some time in the future for this one!!

Many thanks
mcdhu

If you've never diddled with anything in the BIOS, there's probably nothing to record.

Thanks, I'm diddle-free in the BIOS department!!

mcdhu