Bios suddenly disappeared. Help me find the cmos battery.

Aug 22, 2018
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I was in the process of restoring my Satellite L6550 laptop to its out-of-the-box state using toshiba's official CDs when the power suddenly shut down. When I turned the power back on, the laptop would only show a black screen with a blinking cursor on the top left. The boot process would not even get to the BIOS part, won't even show the manufacturer's logo. Help files online advise that I remove the CMOS battery for a few minutes. But therein lies my first problem. The only quarter-sized circular silver piece I see is something welded to the hard disk. Is this the CMOS battery? Is there any other way to solve this problem, perhaps by getting a bootable USB and reinstalling the BIOS? (If that makes sense at all).
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Solution
The CMOS battery will be on the motherboard somewhere not the hard drive. If the laptop suddenly shutdown for no reason in the middle of use im guessing your problem is more serious than a BIOS issue. I doubt clearing the CMOS by removing the battery will fix that, but go ahead and try.

You wont be able to reinstall the BIOS without first getting into the BIOS in order to initiate the BIOS reinstall.

Dunlop0078

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Herald
Feb 13, 2014
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The CMOS battery will be on the motherboard somewhere not the hard drive. If the laptop suddenly shutdown for no reason in the middle of use im guessing your problem is more serious than a BIOS issue. I doubt clearing the CMOS by removing the battery will fix that, but go ahead and try.

You wont be able to reinstall the BIOS without first getting into the BIOS in order to initiate the BIOS reinstall.
 
Solution
A CMOS reset might work. The battery is going to look like one of the two images:

https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/c/cmos.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~5cAAOSwcxVar~nX/s-l640.jpg

And no, it's not on the hard drive. Where on the main circuit board it's located is something you'll have to figure out by disassembling the laptop to some extent, or by looking up disassembly guides/videos. Maybe this will help? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjP33FaftwA

Looks like the battery is by the card reader and resembles the first image I linked. Huge pain to get to it...