Solved! Laptop battery died, suddenly booting straight to bios, boots too fast to see any error messages. CMOS seems fine, SSD HDD 1st Boot, No changes made

[dannylee11]

So I'm using my laptop to listen to music, and general web browsing. I had not installed anything or did anything weird. I unplugged it from the wall to do some house cleaning in the area, the battery is older so the laptop died... like it's done 100 times before.

Later, I plugged the cord back into the wall, turn the laptop back on, and now it's booting straight to BIOS. "Oh just excellent!"

It boots too fast to see any kind of error message.

Immediately notice that the time and date have changed... but not reset. It's actually set to a seemingly random date and time, like Feb 10th, 2015... and 1:10 PM or something like that.

I change the time and date back to IRL time/date. Attempt reboot... and back to BIOS.

I unplugged everything, no external HDD, USB Drive, or CD-ROM... Change the boot order of internal SSD to position 1. Reboot... back to BIOS.

Check time and date, it's still set to IRL time and date... to me, but I could be wrong, this does not seem like a CMOS issue if it's now holding the correct time.

Something strange, but I'm certainly not an expert, was the hard drive was set to RAID... I only have one HDD... So I tried changing it to IDE, but that didn't do anything, so i changed it back.

I have a hard time believing the HDD failed because it is an SSD, it has been working perfectly fine... but like I said, I'm no expert.

Unfortunately, I have some important files floating around on there, that I had not had the opportunity to back up to my NAS yet, so I'm really hoping this is something that someone smarter than me can help me with.

Maybe I should mention, it's not a super old laptop, but not new either... it's a late 2015 MSI gaming laptop.

Thanks!

 

[AlHuneke]

The fact that your time changed indicates the battery, external power and CMOS battery were all off at the same time. If that happens, BIOS settings may be corrupted. Does the SSD show up as installed in the BIOS? Should also be listed as a boot device. If the SSD doesn't show up in the BIOS it may be that it just decided now was a good time to fail.

You can record your current BIOS settings and try resetting everything to the default settings.

 

[AlHuneke]

The fact that your time changed indicates the battery, external power and CMOS battery were all off at the same time. If that happens, BIOS settings may be corrupted. Does the SSD show up as installed in the BIOS? Should also be listed as a boot device. If the SSD doesn't show up in the BIOS it may be that it just decided now was a good time to fail.

You can record your current BIOS settings and try resetting everything to the default settings.

 

[OTG123]

I think the problem is indeed a CMOS problem. The BIOS (startup chip) has all the instructions and information that your computer needs to start. So when the computer ran out of power and died all the instructions and information was reset to default. To answer your question directly about the Date and Time is this. The laptop does not need the CMOS battery to run. Once you plugged the laptop back into the wall the Date and Time was being held in memory from the wall power. As far as the Date not resetting to Jan 1 1980 does not mean anything. The manufacturers my as well pick a random date. The use anything they want as default.

I kinda doubt your Hard drive is set up as a RAID since you cant have a single drive RAID.
RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks .

Ok the last part here is just a guess. If i were you I would check and see if your HDD is set to UEFI or Legacy. I ask this because the vintage of your laptop puts it into a precarious position. It could have came with windows 7 or 8 and if you have upgraded to windows 10 that just adds to the layers. the rule of thumb is, if it started its life as a windows 7 machine it was in Legacy mode. if you upgraded to windows 8 it could then be UEFI mode or Legacy depending on how you installed the new OS and so forth.

Hope that helps

PS. Change your CMOS Battery and play with your HDD settings in the BIOS. remember to make notes of the settings so you can change back if you need to.

Good Luck
OTG