Simviation Forums

I  bought a PC secondhand a while ago and havent been able to get it to work. It comes up with an error message whenever I switch it on! The manufacturers logo comes up then fades then it says

Copyright 1996-2002 Intel Corporation

EA81520A.868.0031.P17.0202050032

Inter (R) Celeron (tm) Processor, 466MHz
64MB System RAM


Legacy Keyboard.........Detected
USB Legacy..................Enabled

CMOS Battery Low

Press F1 To Run SETUP



Hit if you want to boot from the network

Once going through setup to set the time and date and then saving changes it says

Invalid System disk
Replace the disk and then press any key.

Does anyone have any ideas or know where i could get help. The manufacturer wants

Take the floopy disk out thats in the drive then press any key!  Hopefully this is what the problem is.

Also replace that CMOS battery ASAP otherwise it will keep loosing its BIOS settings and the time!

[quote]Take the floopy disk out thats in the drive then press any key!

Ok you have to open up your case and on the mother board somewhere there will be a silver circle about 15mm in diameter.

This is a lithium battery that powers your CMOS you need a new one of these.  All your problems could be stemming from this.

I am thinking you BIOS is not setup correctly and it is not looking at the correct drive with your Operationg System on, this is why you are getting the error.  First off replace the battery.  

After you have got this far then we will try and set your BIOS back up, which isnt going to be easy, but nether the less we will try!

Found the CMOS battery. Looking for replacement battery.
The warning doesnt look too promising

Risk of explosion if battery is replaced incorrectly

I found my motherboard on the intel website. doesnt look too promising either

FOR HISTORICAL REFERENCE ONLY

my board couldnt be that old could it? historical?
http://support.intel.com/support/mother ... /index.htm

That page wont load for me for some reason.  433MHz is quite slow though so I am guessing its at least a few years old.

Just make sure you put the battery in up the right way!

Have you ever set a BIOS up before? if not it could get interesting as BIOS are different on each mobo.  Did you get a mother board manual with the computer?

[quote]That page wont load for me for some reason.

Nope!

Ok next time you start up your PC and go into CMOS/BIOS  (It should be a blue screen but might be another colour)  Take note of the menus.  This will give me a little to work with.

Get your battery sorted first though  ;D Otherwise we will set it all up and you will hit save, then it will loose all those settings due to the flat battery!

the last time i did something with Intel MOBOs they reset to the following default

floppy1: 3 1/4" 1.44MB
floppy2: NONE
IDE1-master: NONE
IDE1-slave: NONE
IDE2-master: NONE
IDE2-slave: NONE

Yeah I'm thinking that hence its not detecting the HDD the OS is on.

ok thanks. I'll have a look and see where i can get a CMOS battery.
Funnily enough, when i asked on the phone to the manufacturer (when they gave me the

Good luck! :-)

allowed battery types are in the motherboard manual... installing a different type can have a bad influence on your system peformance.

It does sound like it could be a hard drive problem, but if your CMOS battery is causing the BIOS to reset to a default setting showing no hard drive.... then that explains that.  Replace the battery first and then get a friend to help you w/ the bios.  If it still has problems, try reformatting in case the old drive became corrupted somewhere along the line.  
Good luck  :)