It's been about a month since the very old (by today's standards) pc my, he started doing some "crazy" things. First of all, level BIOS was losing time settings and dates. At the same time, either in environment windows either in linux, giving termination, the pc it would turn off and after 1-2'' it would start again.
Having considered the simplest (pp : the motherboard battery is dead and needs to be replaced) I was leaving it for tomorrow...
Until tomorrow was yesterday.
I opened the side cover from the machine, unplugged the power, pressed the start button of the computer 2-3 times to discharge the static electricity from the motherboard and components, stepped barefoot on the floor with my hand on the wall to a moment (to get any static off of me as well) and removed the battery.
I put the new one in, I did reset in Bios since I opened it, set time, date, closed them wake on lan etc and I started the machine.
Here I note a detail. Sta windows I have disable the function fastboot For various reasons …
So I ran the updates of windows and I gave termination.
Soooo … the machine shut down and restarted again.
I thought the new battery was broken, old and threw it away. Again the same ... ritual for static electricity, I put another, start, shutdown and the miserable ... box with innards of silicon, plastic, gold (in the processor and contacts) etc rebooted !
Unplugging everything again, unplugging the peripherals too, maybe something, some cable, some device (printer, etc.) is doing something conflict.
Zero result! The miserable system he insisted on always staying connected to his shops Gates...
Finally I thought and asked a question to iGuRu.gr Group having a slight suspicion that: the only thing I didn't get rid of were the memories and that maybe one or both of them had passed away.
I admit that all the participants in the discussion there, wanting to help, suggested three.
A) checking the memories by removing them and putting them one by one until I see how the machine behaves
B) the "scratching" of the contacts of the battery case in order to prevent the case of some oxidation that - possibly - did not allow the closing of the battery circuit and
C) the visual check on the capacitors of the mother board, maybe one had burst.
Finally, I removed the memories, rubbed their contacts on a cotton cloth, just in case they had "something" causing the malfunction, and gently scratched the contacts of the motherboard's battery compartment.
And the problem ceased to exist! as indeed the one μνήμη, for reasons I don't know she was "unbuttoned" (I wonder how many years she was like that) but and the battery slot had (probably from the old battery) a yellowing on its positive terminal which apparently did damage.
Rather, I am writing these lines, not so much in case it happens to a fellow citizen, but because I thought that, unfortunately, the oldin other years, when we "tied the dogs to the sausages", I would have thrown away the tower and gone to buy a new system.
By doing so, I would literally be throwing away something that had dozens of man-hours of design and construction on it (at the manufacturer level) but alsoconditions drawn from Nature that they would go awry. No real reason and no real damage. And that would be a shame.
Finally, if something scares me, it's that some people haven't put their mind to it. Not because they have "franca" but because they do not realize that the times require thinking and actions (and not "wishes" and "exorcisms"...). Obviously, however, the time that follows will take care of them (as it took care of me, who was looking in the trash to find the first alternative battery that I threw away, thinking that it was also broken, when it was not).
Giorgos Th. Kanellakis
