That old tech at a shop in Denver saved me 3 hours on a bad motherboard swap

Dropped off a Dell Optiplex 7050 that kept freezing at boot, and the guy at Micro Center told me to check the CMOS battery first. I was about to swap the whole mobo and spend $120 on a used one, but a $3 battery fixed it in 5 minutes. Has anyone else found a dead CMOS causing boot loops on those SFF Dells from 2017?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jennifer14d ago

Oh man, I had almost the exact same thing happen on a 7050 SFF last year. I was tearing my hair out for like two hours because it would power on for a split second then shut off, just like you're describing. I was this close to ordering a whole new mobo when I remembered I had a handful of CR2032s in my drawer. Popped a new one in and it booted right up like nothing was ever wrong. It's crazy how something so tiny and cheap can make you feel like a genius when it works.

the_max15d ago

Fixed it in 5 minutes" - I bet that felt good watching it post right away. Were you getting the specific two second power cycle where it just keeps restarting over and over? I've had that exact thing on a 7050 and a 7060, and yeah the CMOS was dead in both cases.

miles_garcia15d ago

@the_max you're probably right about the CMOS being a common fix on those SFF Dells, but I gotta disagree that it's always the first thing to check. Nine times out of ten on a 7050 with boot loops, I've seen bad RAM slots or a dying PSU cause the same exact behavior. Popping in a new battery is cheap and easy, sure, but if that doesn't work you're still looking at a full mobo swap. I've wasted a ton of time chasing CMOS issues only to find the board had a cracked trace near the RAM slot. So yeah, try the battery first like the guy said, but don't bet your whole repair on it being that simple.