First let me apologize for my lengthy post im about to make. Let me explain my situation. I recently took a weeks long vacation to florida, in which i had my computer turned off. Upon returning home i noticed the power had went out. And all my computer lights and such were on and my monitor was on but not getting any kind of visual, just a blank/grey screen. Found this to be odd, so i just held the power button for 5 seconds....10 seconds....15 seconds. Nothing happened. My computer wouldnt shut off. The only possible way for me to turn it off was the cut the power supply switch off in the back. So i flipped the switch back on and and all the lights and everything turn back on. Still not being able to turn the computer off, but not seeing anything i didnt know what to do.

So i took it to my friends house, to see if he could do something with it. My thinking was the motherboard has shorted out. Im not EXACTLY sure what he did, but one thing i know we did was we removed the cmos battery and let it sit for like 5 minutes. Other things we did were removed my ram. So we put the battery back in.....presto it worked. Although it was still strange when cutting the computer off, in the fact that the lights on my case didnt cut off like normal, just sorta flicker/died out. NO big deal to me, i just wanted my computer running. So i bring it home. Plug er up. And turn it on, and there was like a delay for about 15 seconds i guess you could say, as i initially got the same grey screen as before, but then it started to boot up like normal. I find this strange. But it was running. Ran for 3-4 days no problems. Come home from work again yesterday, power has went out. Back at step 1. Computer wont shut off, and get the grey screen again on my monitor. So i switched monitors....new monitor is fine. But its got the power saver function i guess you could say, where if the computer doesnt appear to be running it goes in sleep mode. With my lights and everything on by flipping the power supply...it goes into sleep mode, like the computer isnt on.

My questions are, did removing the CMOS battery actually make it work?
I dont want to permanently damage my moboard, and dont want to break the battery so does it just snap out? Or is my moboard going bad?

Or does anyone else have a troubleshooting thing theyd like me to try to figure it out. Thanks again in advance for any replies.
And again i apologize for my essay length question, i just wanted to cover all the facts that i knew so anyone could give me any type of input on what to do.

I think it's a windows problem. Have you

I think it's a windows problem. Have you installed a program before the trouble happened? If so, try to uninstall it. If I were you, I will change the old battery, format, and do a clean install. Back up all your files.

havent installed any new programs or anything for a few months now. So its not that.

So i put this working HD in place of the faulty one since maybe it was an OS problem. The computer still wont shut off. I took all my ram out hoping to get some kind of beep code, but still cant get that due to the fact that it wont turn off the correct way. I want to take the cmos battery out since thats what my friend did and it worked, but im afraid i might screw it up totally. Doing that the wrong way by chipping it off or something.

Do you use a power surge protector? Try to replace your power cable ( a cable from wall outlet going to power supply located at the back of the cpu case) and plug it directly to the wall outlet or to the known good avr. Check what will happen.

ive thought about this, but i leave all the compenents hooked up like normal, and just switch towers, and plug them back up exactly. This crappy cpu runs, cuts off like normal.

It's a miracle but at least your pc is now working fine. Do a frequent scandisk and defrag your hard disk to improve system performance. Good luck.

i must have typed something wrong b4...i meant my slow computer shuts off like normal with the same wiring/set up as my good computer

my good computer is still waiting to be disected if need be.

Okay, leave the cmos battery out of your pc for 30 mins then put it back to its holder. Power on your pc and enter the Bios Setup. Once on there, look for an option to set the bios to its default settings. Be careful read your pc manual. Look if it will help.

The last resort I can see is swap your power supply. Compare them first especially the wattage. It must have the same wattage or higher than the original installed psu. If not, temporarily reduce your load by disconnecting the cdroms, extra hard disk drive, etc. or boot with bare minimum configuration (motherboard, processor, memory, vga card, and boot hard disk drive). Test it.

Make sure you take a note of the Bios setting before removing CMOS battery

Make sure you take a note of the Bios setting before removing CMOS battery

Cool, but make sure the thread isn't 4 years old before replying :)

missed that

I spotted that :)

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