I finally got my old laptop to boot after 3 years sitting in a closet

Pulled out my 2015 Dell from my parents' garage last weekend. Expected maybe an hour of updates but instead it took 7 hours just to get past a boot loop. Turns out the BIOS battery died which wiped the date and that messed with the encryption on the hard drive. Had to dig up a old forum post from 2017 with a weird key combo to bypass it. Anyone else ever have a simple fix turn into an all day project?

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jesse_cooper1mo ago

I expected maybe an hour of updates" - man that's the most innocent thing I've read all week haha. I actually totally get what you're saying though, but I see it a little different. For me, projects like this are almost more fun when they turn into a nightmare. Like yeah the BIOS battery thing is annoying but now you got a story out of it and probably learned something about how encryption works on older drives. I'd take that over a boring routine update any day. Those 7 hours were probably more memorable than if everything just worked.