A bios problem on a Dell Precision 690 tower

This Dell Precision 690 tower, OS Win 7 Home 32 bit. My room mate told me that his USB mouse wasn't working. While investigating the mouse problem. I found a "low bios battery voltage" warning on the top of the screen. To this point windows was working fine except for the mouse. I shut down the tower and replaced the bios battery, and fired up the tower. Now the tower won't get past the bios screen. The bios reports everything is fine except for the following items are missing:
The hard drive
The optical drive
The USB ports
The network controller
and the floppy drive
What gives?

How do I enable all the settings? The missing items are grayed out.

samuria said:

All the settings will have been lost and you will have to enable all the settings again often by default USB and other will be turned off

In the boot order list the hard drive is #1 and the bios still says in the boot order list that it can't see the hard drive. But if I let the tower go on and boot, Windows gets to the 1st Windows screen. Then the screen goes black and the tower starts the boot over again just like it was just turned on. Is the HD corrupted? If so I can fix that. every program on the tower can be reinstalled including the OS.

reble said:

This Dell Precision 690 tower, OS Win 7 Home 32 bit. My room mate told me that his USB mouse wasn't working. While investigating the mouse problem. I found a "low bios battery voltage" warning on the top of the screen. To this point windows was working fine except for the mouse. I shut down the tower and replaced the bios battery, and fired up the tower. Now the tower won't get past the bios screen. The bios reports everything is fine except for the following items are missing:
The hard drive
The optical drive
The USB ports
The network controller
and the floppy drive
What gives?

Steve, when a CMOS battery gets low, you can wind up with scrambled data in the CMOS memory. Just sticking in a new battery will not UN-Scramble it. You must completely RESET (drain) the CMOS Memory, and the best way to do that, is to remove all power from the PC, then remove the old battery and leave it out for about 30 minutes. That gives enough time for the CMOS memory to drain down to Zero.

Then install a new battery, which should have voltage that is OVER 3.0vdc.

Then restore power to the PC and boot it up, going directly into the Bios. Reset your time and date, and boot order, save your settings and let the PC boot into Windows. Everything should now work.


I was once given a little HP Desktop PC, because the owner said it was DEAD. One of my first tests was to remove and test the CMOS battery. It was almost dead. After installing a NEW battery, the little PC booted right up and ran like nothing had ever happened.


Good luck to you with that PC.
Cheers Mate!
TechnoMage

TechnoMag, thanks for the info. I will get it done after a certain 15 yr old boy has gone to school and I don't have to listen that %$%^& stuff he calls music.

TechnoMage2016 said:

Steve, when a CMOS battery gets low, you can wind up with scrambled data in the CMOS memory. Just sticking in a new battery will not UN-Scramble it. You must completely RESET (drain) the CMOS Memory, and the best way to do that, is to remove all power from the PC, then remove the old battery and leave it out for about 30 minutes. That gives enough time for the CMOS memory to drain down to Zero.

Then install a new battery, which should have voltage that is OVER 3.0vdc.

Then restore power to the PC and boot it up, going directly into the Bios. Reset your time and date, and boot order, save your settings and let the PC boot into Windows. Everything should now work.


I was once given a little HP Desktop PC, because the owner said it was DEAD. One of my first tests was to remove and test the CMOS battery. It was almost dead. After installing a NEW battery, the little PC booted right up and ran like nothing had ever happened.


Good luck to you with that PC.
Cheers Mate!
TechnoMage

I pulled the power plug from the power supply and I pulled the CMOS battery. And I let the tower sit like that for 45 minutes. I then put in the CMOS battery and plug in the main power cord. I then went into the bios and found the factory reset. I hit the factory reset, saved settings, then I shut down the tower, then I start the tower. The tower got to the 1st windows screen, then the screen went blank and the tower did new a reboot. The tower is stuck in that loop boot.

samuria said:

There are 100's of setting in the bios so we cant give you a list but often Dell by default sets the hd to raid which would give those problems as it cant find the raid disk and widows wont like it as it will be looking for raid as well there should be an option on the last bios screen to load system defaults or safe settings thats a starting point

Megahertz07 you are way out in left field. This has nothing to do with the C drive partition. The problem is in the bios after I pulled the almost dead CMOS battery and put in a new one.

Megahertz07 said:

Factory recover will format the C: partition and will install a partition image that is stored on the Recovery partition. It will end as the computer came from factory.
You will loose everything on the C: partition.

Under BIOS, don't you have a Default settings or Optimal settings?