Bios Battery

[spoon50]

Hi everyone!

I found out that the Bios battery need to be replace on a portable model "Dell Inspiron 1150".

I tried to find the tutorials in the tech's manual from Dell and.... nothing.....

the only thing I found was, this battery is soldered somewhere on the motherboard.

Before disasembling evrything apart, I'd like to know where to start to reach that battery without having too much problems since a portable is so fragile......

thanks!

spoon

[juppy]

Here's a link to Dell's page on how to get the motherboard out of your laptop.
http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...rd.htm#1084976
Each step that says to "remove" something has a link that tells how to do it, in case you have problems or don't know what they're talking about. Just a note, you'll probably only need to go down to about step 10 or so, because that page is actually for taking the motherboard out and taking everything off of it, like if you were going to send a faulty board back for a warranty or something.....and in this case, you just need to get TO the motherboard in order to be able to change the battery (in other words, you don't need the parts about removing the heatsink fan, processor, etc). It shows a "battery bay" cover that you're going to have to take off too, but from the pictures I can't tell whether it's going to be on the front side of the mobo or the back. You can probably figure it out once you get inside there though. Hopefully.

[Kubie]

Hi juppy,

I'm wondering if the same is true for a HP zt1260? I've tried to find a site that even tells me there is a CMOS battery in there, little lone instructions on how to get it out.

Kubie

[juppy]

Hey Kubie, good to see you again!

Um, I'm not sure, but you know, of the few laptops that I've taken apart for various reasons, all of those have had the battery on the underside of the motherboard. That's not to say they're ALL that way, because I'm sure *somebody* has had to be different....that's just my experience with the few that I've personally worked with....always on the bottom of the motherboard. Sad thing is that most of them have about the same disassembly procedure too. Seems like they can't make it EASY to get to by just giving you a little cover plate to take off. Oh noooo, they make you have to remove the drives, the display, the keyboard, and all the shields and plugs underneath there and come in from the TOP SIDE, just to get to the motherboard. Then, of course, the darn thing is screwed down to the case, so you have to take all those hold-down screws out just to be able to flip the motherboard over to look for the battery! LOL! Basically, my procedure just involved a BIG table.....took everything apart and laid it on the table in the order it came out, then did it in reverse to put everything back together (and on one laptop I still ended up with an "extra" screw that I couldn't find a hole for! LOL!).

I'll look around and see if I can find any instructions for that HP you listed and post back if I do.

EDIT: Boy, you weren't kidding.....there's not much of any kind of manuals for that thing! I found a general use manual on HP's site but the closest thing to a self repair guide was for a ze1000......strange thing was that it was on the zt1260 page though. I don't know whether that means they're the same procedure-wise or whether it just gave me that when it searched for "self repair", y'know? Sorry I couldn't find anything more for ya. Like I said above though, if I had to guess, I'd bet it's on the bottom side of the mobo like so many of them are.

[spoon50]

thanks for your help!

seems to be a longer job than I thought........!

will have a look at this in short terms!

so long!

[Kubie]

Thanks for the reply juppy.
I found the same manual and it looks like I can disassemble/reassemble the laptop with it. I've had the KB cover and KB out of it already, looking to see exactly what memory it has . Heh, one stick under the KB and one in a expansion slot on the bottom of the case.
It keeps time ok so I really don't know if I need to replace the CMOS battery or not. I do have to get into the insides to replace the female AC adapter slot, as it is quirky. If you don't plug in the adapter just right, it won't make connection.
I also found out the HDD has failed and have one on order.
If I can get this thing working good for a hundred, I'll have a decent laptop as it was given to me.

Carl

[juppy]

spoon50 > Hey, no problem. Post back again if you get stuck on something in there....somebody around here will try to help you out. Good luck with it!

Kubie > Well, that's good.....maybe it IS the same procedure even though the model number is different. I noticed that about the memory when I was checking that manual out. I thought that was kinda weird that they stuck one stick of memory easily accessible on the underside, yet the second one they hid under the keyboard! As for your battery, if it's still holding the time okay and your BIOS settings aren't resetting every time you boot, the battery is probably still okay. Some of those little batteries can last quite a while. Case in point, my system that I'm using right now.....I built it about 6 years ago and I've never had to put a different cmos battery in it *knocks on wood*. Then again, I've seen people that say "But my battery is only 6 months old!!", yet it turns out that it's already dead.

HP must have a real problem with their AC jacks on laptops, because that was something that was wrong with one of the laptops I had to fix too. My brother's girlfriend had an HP laptop that you had to wiggle the AC plug every time you used it or it wouldn't work. After some Googling, I found that the jacks on that model would either break internally or more often would have a cracked solder joint on them. Luckily hers turned out to just be the solder joint, so we didn't have to order any parts for that, just zap the joint with a solder iron for a moment. Good luck getting that thing working, Carl.