January 5th, 2007
by Sunil Setty
Just noticed on one of my laptops – an IBM 600X – has starting displaying a strange straight out of a sci-fi flick error message upon boot-up.
When the machine powers on I get a RAM readout, which is okay, then I get two error codes 163 and 173. The screen then changes to a BIOS readout of the date and time (all nulled) with the mouse cursor having changed to a bird that flaps when moved. I kid you not. Those wacky folks at IBM.
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From there, you have to set the time, then move the bird over and click okay (or click cancel if you just want to skip like I did). The machine then loads some more, then goes into another unusual screen, this one of a bar and a circle with on/off in big letters just below. The mouse no longer works, so I did as the screen said and turned the laptop off/on.
The next power-up worked fine and Windows XP booted up normally, however the internal clock was basically zeroed – I didn’t enter the date.
If I turned the machine off then back on the machine boots up fine again, however if I leave the machine off for a few hours and then boot I get those error screen as a listed above. Once I filled in the date/time everything seemed to work normally again until I left the machine off for a while requiring me to again reset the date/time.
I did some digging and apparently I’m getting this error because my laptop’s internal CMOS battery which runs the internal clock (and probably a few other things) is dying or dead. From what I’ve read you can get a new one for just a few bucks, but to replace you need to whip out the old solder iron, a process out of my league. So I guess a trip to the repair shop is in order, assuming I really need to have the right date/time on a laptop I don’t use much anymore.
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