A dead motherboard in 2011 taught me to always carry a spare CMOS battery

I was at a client's office in St. Louis when their server wouldn't post, turned out the battery was flat and the BIOS settings got wiped, now I keep a 3-pack in my bag but I still check the date code first, anyone else have a cheap fix that saved a whole afternoon?

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palmer.zara4d ago

Figured this was overkill for years. I mean, how often does a battery actually die, right? Then I hit that exact same wall with an old desktop that wouldn't boot and spent two hours reseating RAM before I checked the stupid coin cell. Now I've got a ziplock of them in my glovebox and I check the date stamp on every new one like I'm buying milk. It's the dumbest five dollar fix that saves the most expensive part of your day.