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JasonDell OptiPlex 4100/L
Hi, I've had this computer for about a year, found it on the side of the street, worked perfectly, tried to boot it today for LFN testing but hard drive errors, if i should show you the BIOS settings or anything ask, i dont want to type irrelevant information. Heres what I get, is it fixable? 640k base, 31680k extended memory time-of-day clock stopped then it reads drive a, then drive b. then it says 'hard disk failure' about 25 times,  then it says: strike the f1 key to continue, f2 to run the setup utility then when i f1 it boots msdos and runs wfw311, i dont get it, there is no hd failure but it spends like 3 minutes doing shit, then if i dont press f1 in about 5 seconds it locks me out, so i have to wait there for 3 minutes to press f1 any ideas?		2010-07-131:16 AM
BrandonRe:Dell OptiPlex 4100/L
It's possible that the hard drive is going to fail, but just hasn't yet, I'd try installing a different one and see if the problem goes away or not.
2010-07-138:38 AM
ToddRe:Dell OptiPlex 4100/L
For the clock stopping, it probably needs a new CMOS battery. It might be the hard drive is old and maybe defective to some extent or because the CMOS battery is dead, the BIOS must setup the drive before continuing. I had an old IBM that did something similar. I found that when I ran the BIOS settings, I could access the hard disk. When I didn't, I'd get an "Operating system not found" error. Try your luck replacing the CMOS battery.		2010-07-1310:25 AM
BrandonRe:Dell OptiPlex 4100/L
Yeah, Todd's right, if the clock has stopped you should replace the battery, and that should be pretty easy to do.		2010-07-1310:50 AM
JasonRe:Dell OptiPlex 4100/L
on the compaq under it it doesnt boot win98 anymore so i installed dos 7.1 what type is the battery?		2010-07-138:29 PM
ToddRe:Dell OptiPlex 4100/L
The CMOS battery looks like this. It's typically a small 3V battery around the size of a nickel on the motherboard: 		2010-07-139:14 PM
JasonRe:Dell OptiPlex 4100/L
it has a little box saying computer timer battery in red writing or something its a little black box with pos, neg wires coming out, i dont know how to open/replace it		2010-07-139:19 PM
BrandonRe:Dell OptiPlex 4100/L
That's why I didn't jump to saying "change the battery" first thing. Some older computers use funky batteries that aren't as simple to replace.		2010-07-149:49 AM

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