Basically around the 2000s we had a WinXP computer and each time I wanted to use it, either my mom or my dad had to turn it on. However they had to strike the key to enter the BIOS. Everytime when booting the PC. Then they would exit the BIOS and so Windows XP would boot normally.

Do you guys know if your parents also did that and why?

  • BrooklynMan
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    551 year ago

    It’s possible they had a dead BIOS battery, and whenever they had to boot up, they had to reset the BIOS clock, or the system would go haywire thinking it was Jan 1, 1992 or whatever the default date was.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      That is the answer.

      Some boards will prompt you to press the key to enter the BIOS as the only option when the CMOS battery is flat. Whether or not you set the clock, you still have to enter the bios to boot.

      The battery is a standard CR2032, so it’s easy to replace, but it’s not something that most people experience, so it’s not common knowledge.

      Personally I went about 6 months doing the same thing before I even bothered googling “how much does a CMOS battery cost” because it was an old pc anyway.

      • Chaotic Entropy
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        1 year ago

        Some boards position their battery in really awkward and annoying places that force you to remove components to get to it. A real pain… don’t make me remove the CPU cooler just to get to the battery… >.>’

        • Echo Dot
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          1 year ago

          Dell seem to be the worst at it. You cannot access any component without removing every other component.

          I seem to remember at one point I had a computer where you couldn’t easily access the RAM unless you removed the graphics card. Because one of the RAM clips couldn’t be undone because it literally hit the graphics card.

          • @[email protected]
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            31 year ago

            Really? Their laptops (Latitude, at least) are some of the most serviceable ones I’ve ever seen, only second to Thinkpads.

            • Echo Dot
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              11 year ago

              Perhaps their laptops are ok but their prebuilt PCs (they type you parents buy without research) are awful cost cutting junk.

          • Chaotic Entropy
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            11 year ago

            When companies go out of their way to make designs that are as obtuse as possible just for the sake of doing so, it’s especially aggravating. Like pre-built PCs that solder their components on or disable elements so that you can’t upgrade them.

      • BrooklynMan
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        61 year ago

        I worked for Dell tech support in the 90s. sometimes that arcane troubleshooting knowledge still comes in handy!

      • @[email protected]
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        31 year ago

        I had taken out the CMOS on my PC battery when I was a kid so that it would reset the time every startup and I could use the 30 day test version of windows and other programs indefinitely.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      41 year ago

      Yeah, I think it was because the CMOS was dead. But not sure because I don’t have the computer anymore. Thanks for the answer

      • BrooklynMan
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        1 year ago

        oh, I’m so glad I could scratch that memory itch!

        it was a problem form another time. but, honestly, I’m so glad to be able to answer a tech support issue from, what, 20 years ago? yay!

  • @zerbey
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    491 year ago

    Dead CMOS, or the boot order was wrong and they didn’t know how to fix it would be my guess.

  • @[email protected]
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    251 year ago

    Could be a dead CMOS battery, but if the computer had a case switch more likely it was a security feature that lets you know the case was opened. On Acer computers you would have to press F1 to continue the boot, or Del key to enter the BIOS and have the chance to change the setting. Incidentally the setting is usually under the Security tab> Open Chassis. You can reset the notification or turn it off.

    I run into this situation on office computers all the time, because no one knows how to turn it off or reset it.

  • @[email protected]
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    131 year ago

    I’m old enough to remember having to do this myself. Unfortunately I’m also old enough to have completely forgotten why.

  • @[email protected]
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    111 year ago

    I’m not sure, but since it sounds like they opened the BIOS just to close it and boot normally, I would assume that they thought of it more as a command than an option.

    I’ve seen it a lot since I work in an IT field. Sometimes people think that the computer is telling them to do something when really it’s just giving the option to do something.

  • @Intheflsun
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    91 year ago

    Couple of things - back then, bios was slow to load. Add to that if they had a usb keyboard or mouse, the bios wouldn’t detect it and make you go into bios (even though the keyboard and mouse it just didn’t detect accepted the keypresses to go into bios). There was an option to set in most to skip keyboard and mouse errors. They probably didn’t know how to set it.

  • @EyesEyesBaby
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    61 year ago

    Maybe they didn’t setup the boot disk properly? Another explanation could be that some pre-xp pc’s required you to type “win” in the CLI for Windows to start it’s GUI.

    Unrelated, but I remember that my dad had to open up the PC and install a new video card once so that I could use Paint.

    • @alokir
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      51 year ago

      I think it was Win 3.1 where you last had to type “win” to start Windows.

    • @muzzle
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      21 year ago

      You only had to type win with very old versions of windows (v3.0 or earlier) or if you were using LILO as a bootloader.

  • @Moghul
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    41 year ago

    Is it possible to ask them?

  • Jeena
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    31 year ago

    My assumption is that the default boot device was wrong and they needed to go to the bios to switch it but would never save the correct order so they had to do it every time.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 year ago

    Not sure! However, it’s possible the coin cell that keeps the BIOS settings was removed or dead. This forces the BIOS into default configuration on boot, which may have caused a boot failure if you needed some specific hardware configuration set in BIOS.

    Maybe they used it as a way to control computer access, but it seems more likely that they just didn’t get around to replacing the coin cell :D

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      My mom would have to come in and put a password into the BIOS to boot up when I got in trouble when I was younger.

      I was also punished by being made to go play outside with the neighborhood kids lol.

      They wouldn’t stop me from reading, and if they grounded me I’d just be like whatever, I have three new books from the library lol.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 year ago

        That sounds… very familiar. I got through an alarming number of books in childhood through similar mechanisms.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 year ago

    I vaguelly remember around this time some low end computers were shipped with FreeDOS instead of Windows, in order to save on licencing fees. AFAIK this was the case because legislation in some european countries restricted the sale of new computers to ones which had an OS preinstalled.

    Maybe XP was installed after the purchases however a partition with FreeDOS/whatever remained as the default boot option. Hence your parents had to select the other boot option (Windows XP) manually. Granted you could change your primary boot partition permanently, but maybe your parents didn’t know this.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 year ago

    They had some BIOS issue or wanted to boot from a different partition. Possibly to keep your virus laden downloads away from their files.

    • GroteStreet 🦘
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      11 year ago

      “Let us just change the boot order so you can play in your shitty OS, and not our secure Gentoo drive”