I’m a control freak about things- and one thing is my technology. I think some techs feel the same, at least as far as their personal machines go. When I got home tonight and booted Megatron the BIOS cheerfully chirped at me and let me know: there was CMOS Checksum Error. There’s a moment of fear, that loss of control that strikes you when something like this happens. Not quite as bad when I thought my secondary drive crashed… (I realized 20 minutes later that the fresh WindowsXP install I just performed needed SP2 to load my large volume)- that was bad. This was more like dammit all to hell bad.

I immediately considered what was new, what was different- what the could be the cause? Although no longer a tech by trade, I’m not a total loss yet. After peeking at the BIOS, everything appeared in order. Rebooted, same thing. Proceeded to disconnect the machine, blow out all the dust and make sure everything was seated properly. Yes, it did occur to me that the CMOS battery might have simply gone bad, but I was unsure… A Google search for computer errors is like a Google search for cold symptoms- you end up thinking it could be anything and everything. My oldest CDROM drive had been on the fritz for the better part of a year now, so I disconnected that while the patient was open.

Plugged it all back up and in- and everything loaded OK. Restarted a few times without issue. I think it unlikely it was the CDROM, and in all actuality the CMOS battery probably needs replacing- there’s nothing visibly wrong with the system otherwise. Nevertheless, mikull doesn’t like seeing Megatron in pain. Keep him in your thoughts!

Filed under: Geek