Setup program from

There may be other manufacturers who use this key as well, although it presents the opportunity for some confusion. The possible confusion comes from the fact that [F1] is also used to bypass some error conditions that are detected by the BIOS at startup time.

So, on these systems, you may inadvertently bypass an error condition when you really intended to enter the Setup routine. On some motherboards that use these key combinations, you can actually enter Setup at any time. Be sure not to do this, though, at any time except initial startup.

If you start making changes to BIOS settings while your operating system is running, you could cause yourself serious problems. All Compaq machines use [F10] at startup, but you may need to pay attention to exactly where the computer is in the startup process, depending on the model of the machine.

On these models, when you hold down [Esc] as you power the system up, you will be taken into the Setup routine. Conclusion There may well be other techniques used by different computer and BIOS manufacturers to enter the all-important Setup program, but these are all I have personally experienced over the years. Unless you get a brand new one thats guaranteed to sit on the shelf for 10 years its not likely to be good. CMOS is not designed to be off for months or years.

Its only for short term down time of a few hours. The rest of the time the system runs from 5V standby power while plugged in. When the computer is not plugged into a wall socket, the battery has an estimated life of three years. When the computer is plugged in, the standby current from the power supply extends the life of the battery.

If this event occurs, replace the battery with an equivalent one. I too am a user. View solution in original post. That could mean a motherboard failure on the 10 yr old computer. The default bios setting is usually not correct especially after 10 years. Go through the bios again to see what is wrong and change it. It could be pointing to hardware or procedures that no longer exists. I hadn't made any other changes to BIOS or hardware prior to the issue arising.

I've checked BIOS options and there's nothing there that looks wrong to me, happy to be steered to some likely candidates though. I am facing the same issue since 2 days ago. My machine is a Inspiron , purchased in January. The root-cause is the CMOS battery. After I replace a new battery, and after manually reboot machine twice then all get back to normal.

One big question remains: how come the CMOS battery can die off in less than 2 years after purchase? I prefer Duracell or Energizer. I get better deals on Duracell on Amazon than in the store.

Sony only lasted me 2 years. This gives those developers complete control over the setup program's look and feel. The setup program can be written to install additional software, such as an ODBC application. How much of the installation is actually done by the setup program depends on what functions it calls in the installer DLL.

These functions do not actually copy files; the setup program does this using the information in the arguments of these functions. These functions do not actually remove the files for the component; the setup program does this if the new usage count falls to 0. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported.