My desktop is 8 years old and over the years I have upgraded from Vista to Win 7 to Win 10, have the latest updates and drivers, added more memory and better graphics cards. It was taking anything up to 3 minutes to boot up and I was experiencing screen freezing during games, internet use, anything in fact. As my clock was losing 4/5 hours during the night when it wasn't connected to a power source I decided to replace the battery.
WOW! boots up in 17 seconds, no freezing even graphic hungry games (Kholat was a nightmare to play) My question is surely a simple battery change could not of made all this difference-its like having a new computer.

Interesting. I have never heard of the battery making so many dramatic improvements. I will have to remember that.

News to me too, but I will definitely remember it!

Perhaps the problems was more of a BIOS issue - from the internet:

"the CMOS battery stores the BIOS settings of your computer.

As we know, the BIOS enables us to identify what hardware is on the system and what device drivers to use. When the CMOS battery is weak, the BIOS loses data and the computer starts to malfunction. Below are some signs or symptoms of a bad CMOS battery that needs replacement:


CMOS Failure Symptoms
•Incorrect computer date and time settings. (This is the earliest sign that lets you know when the time is right to get a new CMOS battery.).
•The computer occasionally turns off or refuses to start.
•The laptop could not find a printer.
•Malfunctioning of the mouse.
•Problems launching a program.
•Beeping sound from the computer."

I had to laugh at myself as for a couple of seconds I read the battery line quite literally and was telling myself a battery does not store anything

My Dell XPS m1730 laptop is showing signs of this... I cannot find out (video or written) on how to find and replace the CMOS battery. Found video for pretty much every other computer but not the XPS m1730 and they seem to all differ in how you reach the battery... Dell's customer service said sorry you are out of warranty and would not help.... gotta love them.

What you need is the "Service Manual" (not the "Owner's Manual").
It's available from Dell ***here***
Or ***this direct link*** may work.

Pages 23-24 are about "removing the coin cell battery" but you'll also have to reference other sections for more information on how to disassemble the laptop.

Thank you Jenny100, I will go look this up... thank you

The CMOS battery powers the volatile memory that stores any custom BIOS settings from defaults and the system time. If it dies the settings simply revert to defaults. This may be a bit off for custom built systems, but for a standard box from a manufacturer the BIOS is programmed for that specific PC and has few, if any custom settings beyond the defaults, so a CMOS battery failure should make little difference outside of loosing the time on every boot.

Even on a custom built PC replacing the CMOS battery will not restore these extra settings on its own. You would have to enter the BIOS to make those changes again.

That said, the only sure sign of a failed CMOS battery is the reversion of the time after every power up. This battery is easy to locate if you can see the entire motherboard. It is usually a disk battery that looks somthing like this:

Found this - "The function of CMOS RAM is to store information your computer needs when it boots up, such as Disk Drive details, Keyboard type and Video Interface information, details of the configuration of the PCI Bus slots and even a Password to restrict access to the CMOS. If the battery that powers your CMOS RAM dies, all this information is lost, and your PC will boot with the CMOS basic defaults. In most cases, this means you'll have no access to your Disk Drives until you supply the CMOS with the necessary information".

Perhaps the addition of memory and replacement of graphics cards over time on my desktop has made a difference in the bios. By restoring defaults after replacing the battery has resulted in the performance improvment. Anyhow, I am not complaining, and thanks everyone for an informative discussion.

Not really anymore as nearly all BIOSs default to auto detect, which means that after POST it will query the attached drives for the basic info. It is not like it was in the '80s where you might have to manually enter number of cylinders, etc. about the drive.

Jenny100, thanks for the link that was exactly what I needed! After reading it over I did not want to take the hood off..then the keyboard and then be careful of that ribbon...I'll tackle a desktop but hesitant with a laptop so off to my Tech support.. where I have my internet... I brought him the instructions you provided with the link and a CR2032 battery and gave it to him.... $13.25 later I had my computer up and running. I must say that after being on my 8.01 the XP was soooooooo slow...lol

That's a good price, even if it doesn't include the battery.

I had to fire up my XP for something a week or so ago and was amazed at how I had forgotten how slow and primitive it feels now after Window 7 and Window 8.1!

I experience varying degrees of "speed" with my computers - Win98 then WinXp then Win7

But the speed isn't what matters most to me - it's what each machine can play - that often the others can't - that's important

I agree Mad, that is why I keep my old computers... I have a 95--98--2000--XP and my 8.1 and my new surface pro 3 that I am going to make 10, but I must say now that I have a touch screen I find myself touching the screen of my other computers... I do like the touch screen option.

I don't think I would like touch screen. I didn't like when DHL delivered an envelope to my job last week and I had to sign for it with my finger.

Fresh Windows installations on brand new hard drives are always faster, no matter what version of Windows you're talking about.
Every computer I've ever used has gradually gotten slower over time with successive Windows updates and software installations, no matter what version of Windows is used.

Type of drive is also important.
My brother uses XP on an SSD drive, and it boots like greased lightning -- way faster than either Windows 7 or Windows 8 on a normal hard drive.


Exactly. Often it's best to use the version of Windows the game was made for -- and on a computer with similar hardware to what the game was designed to run on. Excessive speed isn't necessarily a good thing.


I don't like that either. Seems unsanitary.
Who knows if any of the people who previously "signed for packages" scratched their bum first.

But I don't like "touch screens" in general.
I use a capacitive stylus with my iPad.