PC boots into BIOS if I dont use it for 2 to 3 days, but works fine (boots into windows) if I use it daily. Note: I unplug my PC from power socket.

[Ali Anas]

I built my PC new, around 2 months back and it worked fine till now, this weird issue is occurring since a week or two. I highly doubt if its CMOS battery.

 

Windows 10 64 Bit. UEFI. CSM is disabled. Boot priority is set to Windows Boot Manager first.

 

Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M-K (BIOS: F1)

Processor: Ryzen 5 5600

RAM: Tforce Delta 8GBx2

GPU: NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070

NVME: Lexar 500GB
SATA SSD: Team Group 1 TB

[TubsAlwaysWins]

Does it complain about date and time being incorrect? 

 

That sounds like a CMOS battery to me. Why do you think it isnt? Just becuase its new? 

[Ali Anas]

3 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

Does it complain about date and time being incorrect? 

 

That sounds like a CMOS battery to me. Why do you think it isnt? Just becuase its new? 

No, time and date and all the settings remain fine, I just have to save and exit then it boots into windows. Yes I built it all new.
One more thing, initially the CSM was not disabled. And it worked fine, and one day it gave me an error "reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key", again, I just used to reboot my PC and it worked fine (booted into windows),  my vendor told me to disable CSM. But since when I've disabled CSM, it doesn't give me this error, but boots into BIOS if I dont use my PC for 2 to 3 days (yes, it remains unplugged) and "reboot and select proper boot device' error also occurred only when PC stayed unplugged for more than 1 or 2 days. Weird! Help please.

[PDifolco]

19 minutes ago, Ali Anas said:

I built my PC new, around 2 months back and it worked fine till now, this weird issue is occurring since a week or two. I highly doubt if its CMOS battery.

 

Windows 10 64 Bit. UEFI. CSM is disabled. Boot priority is set to Windows Boot Manager first.

 

Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M-K (BIOS: F1)

Processor: Ryzen 5 5600

RAM: Tforce Delta 8GBx2

GPU: NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070

NVME: Lexar 500GB
SATA SSD: Team Group 1 TB

Smells like dying CMOS  battery, it empties itself in a couple days, just replace it

[TubsAlwaysWins]

6 hours ago, PDifolco said:

Smells like dying CMOS  battery, it empties itself in a couple days, just replace it

Agreed but if its not asking to set the date and time...

@Ali Anas

What happens if you leave it plugged in instead of unplugging it? 

What happens if you power off, unplug, and plug it back in immediately? 

Check that the Clear CMOS jumper isnt being bridged on accident. 

Are you in AHCI or RAID mode? 

Have you updated the BIOS yet? 

Have you tried clearing the CMOS and reconfiguring everything? 

[Ali Anas]

4 hours ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

Agreed but if its not asking to set the date and time...

@Ali Anas

What happens if you leave it plugged in instead of unplugging it? 

What happens if you power off, unplug, and plug it back in immediately? 

Check that the Clear CMOS jumper isnt being bridged on accident. 

Are you in AHCI or RAID mode? 

Have you updated the BIOS yet? 

Have you tried clearing the CMOS and reconfiguring everything? 

If I leave it plugged its mostly fine, but tonight I left it plugged for 10 hours and then when I turned it on it gave me BSOD windows error (for the first time today) "Your PC/Device needs to be repaired" Error Code: 0xc000007b (screenshot attached) but I restarted the PC it booted fine into windows like a charm.

-Usually if I leave it plugged and turn it on it boots into windows easily.

-And if I unplug it and plug it again it also works fine and boots into windows. Even if I keep it unplugged for 12 hours and plug it in on, it boots fine into windows. 

But if I keep it unplugged for more than 36 to 48 hours, then it becomes the problem that it boots into BIOS.

-I am not using RAID.

-CMOS jumper is clear and not bridged at all.

-No, I haven't updated the BIOS, it's on stock (the very first version). Should I update?

-No, I havent cleared the CMOS yet. Should I?

[PDifolco]

1 hour ago, Ali Anas said:

If I leave it plugged its mostly fine, but tonight I left it plugged for 10 hours and then when I turned it on it gave me BSOD windows error (for the first time today) "Your PC/Device needs to be repaired" Error Code: 0xc000007b (screenshot attached) but I restarted the PC it booted fine into windows like a charm.

-Usually if I leave it plugged and turn it on it boots into windows easily.

-And if I unplug it and plug it again it also works fine and boots into windows. Even if I keep it unplugged for 12 hours and plug it in on, it boots fine into windows. 

But if I keep it unplugged for more than 36 to 48 hours, then it becomes the problem that it boots into BIOS.

-I am not using RAID.

-CMOS jumper is clear and not bridged at all.

-No, I haven't updated the BIOS, it's on stock (the very first version). Should I update?

-No, I havent cleared the CMOS yet. Should I?

I'd start with replacing the $1 CMOS battery and check if it works

[Ali Anas]

3 hours ago, PDifolco said:

I'd start with replacing the $1 CMOS battery and check if it works

I just bought the CMOS Battery. I'll replace it in a while then I'll update. Fingers crossed!

[Ali Anas]

@PDifolco @TubsAlwaysWins
I changed the CMOS battery yesterday. Using Panasonic Lithium CR2032 now. I replaced the battery and tested twice after unplugging. Both the times PC booted successfully into windows. Checked on intervals of 3 hours and 13 hours. It's fine till now so far.

 

But I will update you after a week of testing. Let's see. Thanks both of you!

[TubsAlwaysWins]

12 hours ago, Ali Anas said:

I changed the CMOS battery yesterday. Using Panasonic Lithium CR2032 now. I replaced the battery and tested twice after unplugging. Both the times PC booted successfully into windows. Checked on intervals of 3 hours and 13 hours. It's fine till now so far.

 

But I will update you after a week of testing. Let's see. Thanks both of you!

Good deal. Good luck!

[E-waste]

On 11/8/2023 at 1:27 AM, Ali Anas said:

But if I keep it unplugged for more than 36 to 48 hours

Seriously think about this:

 

What amount of electricity are you saving by switching off the power supply unit?

 

Compared to that, how much electricity, shipping, server network use, plastic waste and more demand for battery cells, and also the waste of the lithium battery that is now depleted, is used to purchase a new battery?

 

I would like to share a recycling company, called ERI, at lesst in the U.S. that recycles electronics.  Even that takes a considerable amount of energy, but is better than corroding and polluting ground soil and water in a landfill.  So, compared to all of that energy and bew manufacturing demand, why not use the tiny amount of standby power from your psu, so your cmos battery doesn't have to be used up when you have power?

 

If you REALLY think this is the way to save power, setting your monitor brightness to 0, turning off your lights and opening your shades, and disconnecting fron wifi or blocking telemetry domains / using script or domain blockers like:

 

NoScript

 

Privacy Badger (developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and security checked and patched with Google's help)

 

And keeping a windows C: full disk backup on a spare hard disk, will do far more to save power.  The backup will save significant amounts of network resources, externally from you, at the server side, and also completely protect you from 100% of all malware in existence and in the future.

 

Using Privacy Badger is a simpler nicer interface compared to NoScript, and lets you choose only what you want to load on a website, and not the RIDICULUS 20 - 25 different websites on most sites today.  That will save a LOT of electricity.

 

What also can save power (maybe, maybe not, depending on performance) is making sure AMD power saving on the CPU clock speed is enabled.  Whatever it is called, will keep the cpu at the absolute lowest possible idle speed, instead of at full speed clocks.

 

In Windows, go to your power configuration and advanced power plan settings and check the following settings:

 

Minimum CPU percentage: 0.

 

Maximum: 50.  Test performance when changing this as it limits clock speeds.  If you notice you are waiting 50% for programs to load, then you will not be saving any energy, as #1 your system is still using a decent amount of power, and will do so for twice as long and

 

#2 Your monitor will likely still be on, and consumes around 16-20 watts, even on the lowest brightness, negating any possible power savings.

 

Still going through the power settings list, set your hard disk spin down time to about 30 minutes, and listen for it to spin down.  Because Windows is constantly doing who knows what, 30 minutes may be too long and it never spins down.  Setting this value too low however, will wear out your hard disk, necessitating purchasing a new one, and I believe that's far, far, far more wasteful rather than allowing it to stay spinning and lasting a few years longer.

 

Set your monitor time out to 3 minutes or less.  Seriously think about this: do you let your phone screen stay on for three minutes when your are not using it?  I set my timeout on my phone for 30 minutes and use the power key to turn it off.

 

I saw a movie, where there was someone who needed emergency bandages and such and the other person was using the phone with one hand and their nose to research how to help.  The screen was set to a timeout of 15 seconds, and it was discussed, and the person needing help said it was to save power.  It would have taken too much time to change the setting, and so the other person kept waking up the screen with their nose.  So I set my timeout to 30 minutes.  I also try to remember to crank up brightness or set to auto when I go outside, so that if someone else needs to use my phone when I am not able, they'll be able to read the display on a sunny day.

 

You probably have a fancy non-volitile memory express device, or solid state disk, but even so, using Windows sleep mode, and keeping programs open, instead of closing them (such as web browser and file explorer) could also save some energy when restarting your computer use.  Instead of going through the power-on-self-test, and rebooting windows, you're back up in as fast as your monitor can display a video signal.

 

Turning off automatic updates for a few months (yes it is a bit risky, but going back to the backup idea, poses zero risk for a weekly backup) and only installing the new 6-month updates, will save a significant amount of power as well, instead of downloading updates every single week.  Then you can have a large backlog of available updates and get them all at once, or usually after about six or ten reboots, because windows is quite odd in how it offers available updates.  Maybe it is for the better, but it sure takes a bit longer to get them all.

 

Pause all game updates and skip them.  Start your game client software with networking disabled to prevent any update checks.  I think it's horrible, forcing me to change a currently functional game just because a billion-dollar company wanted to add something.  It worked fine just three weeks ago, and it will still work fine now.  So don't force people to change the software for stupid additons.

 

This way, you can completely skip currently available updates for games, for months at a time, until you are 100% certain that you must have a specific game update because it fixes a bug currently in the game, or adds a feature you would enjoy.

 

If you have multiple computers with similar games, use Steam's local download feature, and reinstall games locally from the network, and just imagine how much energy that will save vs the hundreds of gigabytes pulled from all the various servers and all the electricity from all the network hops involved.

 

If you want to see just how many connections, servers and data centers your connection must go through to get to where you want to view, (and back again, possibly through a different route)

 

In the windows command line, just type cmd

 

right click command prompt and run as admin for all features and command options:

 

tracert linustechtips.com

 

Tracert will show all the different server hops required to get to a destination.  Each one of those hops uses electricity for the traffic in both the network routers and switches as well, and it is double once it comes back to your system.  I have no idea how much power it is, but avoiding network use where possible will surely make a positive difference.

 

I hope this gets your brain thinking about ways to reduce waste and reduce electricity use, without wearing down your components. The power you save from powering off your pc completely is not at all worth it when it takes an untold amount of resources to make a new battery, package it in plastic, ship it multiple times, especially starting with those huge diesel (not bio-diesel either) powered ships, which are incredibly massive sources of air pollution, then, ship it again to the various stores across multiple countries. Then, to ship it to your home or busines.

 

Then throwing away the plastic, and old battery, which will be sent to a landfill.  Plastic can be recycled, but only two times in its current formulations, and because of that, recycling is a terrible burden on our environment, and doesn't really help at all.  Burning plastic, as polluting as that process may be, is actually better, because it evaporates the material, and reduces the amount of micro-plastics that will continuously for the forseeable future, for several generations after us, will be created, and the problem will only continue to get worse, until probably 200+ years from now, eventually, we'll have destroyed this beautiful or, once beautiful planet enough, that it is obvious that if we do not stop producing and discarding plastic, that the planet will become inhabitable without serious health risks.

 

There is already micro-plastics in our bottled water, beer, milk, juice, tap water, food, soil and also our air.  It is so prevelant, that bees are able to pick it up just flying around, and it is NOT just in cities either.  Even in rural areas, bees have just as much microplastics stuck to them as city dwelling bees, so it points to dispersion everywhere, and imagine just how awful this will be in 100 and 200 years.

 

So the tiny bit of power you maybe saved, was 1000% or more offset by the energy you used buying a new lithium battery and discarding the old one.

 

There is also a baseline-load for coal-fired powerplants, and so saving a watt or two here and there is basically completely ineffective.  Now, if every person in any continent also turned off their power strip or unplugged their PC, just imagine how many more lithium batteries would be needed for the new demand, the plastic, shipping, and especially the lithium salt mining operations in India.  I bet that's not great for the environment, even though it is a naturally-occuring mineral in the salt.

 

I bet lithium batteries in vehicles is most likely far worse than petroleum-powered engines, and then most of many countries are still using coal-based power, so what is really being saved?

 

One last thought on this, I'll stop.  Keeping your device, whether it be a phone, television, network router, monitor, speakers, headphones, cpu, ram, hard disk, tablet, laptop, case fan, charging cable, network cable, keyboard, mouse, flash drive, sd card, even your clothes and shoes, for as long as you possible can, and try to keep them all in working order, will do far more good for our planet than switching off your power supply.  Actually I have just one very last point:

 

Rechargable nimh batteries.  If you have any equipment that use aa and aaa batteries (even D-cell) then choose rechargable varieties.  Panasonic Eneloop are a high-quality rechargable option and made in Japan.  They are also charged using solar energy in the factory.  I have some rechargable aa batteries that I use in game controllers and two aa batteries used in remotes.  It just takes one purchase of a battery recharger, and you can reuse the batteries I don't know how many times, because I have had rechargable batteries for a few years now, and mine still hold an excellent charge.  It is also speculated that these batteries also have a much lower drain when not in use, compared to alkaline (non-rechargable) batteries.  Not only are you saving the plastic packaging, shipping fuel, and electricity and mineral mining required to make new batteries constantly (which I can not POSSIBLY understand) but you are also (not) saving a lot of money.

 

Let's say you purchase 60+ AA batteries.  You can use those batteries 30 times.  An AAA example would actually be simpler as it is what most remotes use now.

 

So lets assume two AAA batteries in a television remote last about 6 months.  It is quite a long time, and could be significantly longer because I rarely have to change any batteries in remotes nor do I see anyone else ever changing them.  So lets assume 9 months or longer.

 

30 x 9 = 270 months or 270 / 12

 

27 / 12 = 2.25 or 22.5 years... Hmm.  That seems a bit much but I guess it is accurate enough.

 

So $60 or so for 30 battery pairs over close to a third of a lifetime... Not bad.

 

For rechargable, since you don't need 60 batteries, how about four devices, so eight AAA batteries + the cost of a quality charger:

 

Depending on if you go eneloop pro (slightly higher capacity per charge, but 25% the charging cycles)vs regular $18 for the batteries alone (and estinated 2,000 charging cycles for non-pro eneloop batteries) and how about $25 for a decent individual-battery charging device, like an energizer unit.

 

So near $45 for eight pro-eneloop aaa batteries and a charger.  Looking quite expensive right now.

 

But these batteries can be recharged hundreds, if not thousands of times.  Assuming a rechargable set of aa batteries only lasts five months per charge (that's about what I get from my aaa batteries and I get quite a long time from aa-rechargable batteries as well and very rarely charge them.  I'm guessing every 7-8 months between charges, it's that infrequent.

 

Maybe the batteries only last 10 years at the absolute most.  This would mean still that a pair of aaa eneloop batteries still last over the course of 13 pairs of aa batteries over a 9-month alkaline runtime.  That is 9.75 years of battery runtime, near the supposed life-span of nimh rechargable batteries.

 

With a supposed total capacity of 10 years, this would still require the re-purchasing, including discarding of plastic and paper, at least two times (or three to get to at least the remaining 2.5 years of the 22.5 years) vs ONCE for the 60-pack of alkaline batteries over the coarse of 22.5 years.  20-22 years of battery runtime in one purchase vs an estimated 10 years for rechargables.

 

Therefore, because of the increased shipping and plastic use in smaller quantities it works out to be MORE harmful to the planet to buy small quantities of rechargable batteries not less.  Not less at all.  Sure less batteries, but more fuel used in shipping twice over twenty years, vs ONCE over 22.5 years.  So to make rechargable batteries LESS wasteful, you must absolutely MUST purchase at least a minimum of 24 rechargable batteries.  If 8 aaa batteries are $18, 24 eneloop aaa are somewhere around $55-60, a $25 battery charger (which may only charge two pairs of batteries at a time) for an upfront cost of $80+.

 

This increases the overall battery capacity to a total of 12 pair of battery divided by 10 years over four remotes is 30 years.  That is the ONLY way to match the minimal packaging waste of alkaline batteries, giving a few extra years of use (estimated 22.5 years of battery capacity for alkaline vs 30 years for the rechargable.  Hmm, this isn't looking as good as I thought it would.  It at least 30-40% more expensive, but you'll get about 30 years of battery charges in the 12 pairs of batteries.  So this is nearly 40% more expensive for only 33% more battery capacity, so... i guess you don't even save a dime, in fact it costs the same amount as alkaline if you were to buy 80 alkaline batteries to get the same 30-year runtime.  This means for the exact same cost and having a battery charger, you are reducing battery waste for four devices by 80 - 24 = 56 batteries saved over the coarse of 30 years but you don't save any money at all.  If you care about saving power, you must do this to save battery waste and not to save money.  I still think it is worth it, but it will never be beneficial if anyone (probably 9/10 purchases) are for small 8 packs, and 16-packs only break even with 60-packs of alkalines from a cost and packaging perspective.  Every ten years, it is significantly more harmful, just from the micro-plasitics issue it will cause from the packaging alone with small quantity purchases.  So if you want to get into rechargable batteries, buy at least 16 at the absolute bare-minimum of each kind that you need to make this worth it and burn the plastic to avoid the micro-plastics breaking apart in our soil and water.

 

I hope this helps you think a bit more broadly about power and resource use, and not just at the wall power use.

[E-waste]

@Ali AnasThat's a lot to think about isn't it.  Which is why I posted it, to allow you to focus on the bigger picture of what the effects of throwing away things will be.  Micro-plastics are so prevelant, not some whacky niche issue, that they are found from the top of Mt. Everest, (and the folks who studied that must have contributed some themselves to get up there) in three different elevations and 10-15 different measured areas, and especially at the base of the mountain, to being air-bourne, picked up by bees just flying around in both cities and rural areas.  It is estimated that we EAT a credit-card sized amount of plastic weekly or monthly.  It's in our tap water, bottled water, beer, and other beverages.

 

It is also in our soil, and any time we wash polyester / plastic clothing, the fibers shed off into our municipal local drinking water.  So I'd say it's a big deal.  Just throwing that out there for those who haven't read about this issue.

 

Back to electricity though, if you think switching off the psu will do something (besides draining a cmos lithium battery) here's a far better idea:

 

Between 1 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. or whoever is up to turn it back on, if required, turn off your wifi router, and your isp cable modem.

 

This is not only save at least 10-15 watts for five-six hours every day, but it will also prevent your smart tv from staying connected to the network, sending out data to roku, netflix and other apps.  If you want to see this for yourself, you can use Windows "mobile hotspot" to set your wireless card to both a client AND an access point, at the same time.  Of course it works great on Windoes, but support for access point on Linux is spotty, especially with realtek hardware.

 

With mobile hotspot turned on (has nothing to do with cellular) you can then:

 

Install Wireshark

 

https://wireshark.org

 

Then once installed, activate mobile hotspot.  You must already be connected to a working wifi network, which is an artificial blocker to mobile hotspot, but people would complain it doesn't work if they weren't connected.

 

On your smart TV, go into your wireless settings, and if the wireless signal will reach (I had to pick up my tower pc and move it 20 feet into another room) connect the tv to your wifi hotspot that you turned on.

 

Then in wireshark, double click the "lan" something (not your usual wifi) which also has a moving waving line next to it.

 

You should see two items with active moving lines, double click the one that isn't "wifi connection" but something else.

 

This will then show, because your pc network card just became a router of sorts, all network activity from the devices connected to your wifi hotspot.

 

Yes, you have to do it this way because wireshark can't read other network devices activity much past mdsn and ssdp and such.  So your pc must be the connection you are viewing in wireshark.

 

__

__

 

 

Finally, in wireshark, showing the lan whatever hotspot network activity, go to view _ resolved network IP addresses.

 

If you skip this step, you'll only see numbered addresses and NOT the websites they go to.

 

Doing all that, you'll see all the network activity that happens, just by waking up the television display.  If you leave it setup overnight, and leave wireshark running, you can see every packet that leaves your TV.  It may / will use encryption against you and hide the data that it is sending, but you'll see the network activity of it sending "something", and you can learn what it is doing in both idle states, and when you push buttons on the remote.

 

So, if you don't think unplugging your tv at night will save power, you're basically right.  It will only cause it to reload all those websites, network time updates, update checks, and apps, all over again.  And you can prove it because you can see the activity.

 

Does it also do this when you disconnect the wifi and reconnect it?  If so, is it the same network activity that will happen if you leave stuff on, but turn on the tv from standby again?

 

I'll do some tests to let you know, because I already have all of this set up.

 

So does saving 15 watts for six hours, offset the amount of energy used by reloading the wifi connection on the tv

 

and

 

Does unplugging the TV result in the same network activity when cold booting, vs temporarily (six hours) unplugging the wifi connection?

 

See, it's not so simple, even though we want it to be.

 

Here are some ideas that don't cause these issues:

 

Disable either 2.4 Ghz, or 5 Ghz on your wifi router.  If all your devices work with 5 Ghz, with acceptable range and speed, disable 2.4 Ghz.

 

If your devices need 2.4 Ghz, disable 5.

 

Also, because 2.4 Ghz will travel through walls far better than any other frequency higher than it:

 

Reduce AP transmitter power.  The default is on full power somewhere around 0.5w, just half a watt!  But even so, you can reduce the transmitter power to the lowest setting, who know what output power with closed-source coorporate default firmware, and over time, maybe that adds up to something?

 

Also, did you know your wifi router, 10 times per second, non-stop, 24h a day, is beaming out a small packet?

 

It is the beacon interval packet, and contains the network name, and network capabilities to any listening client devices, so theoretically, you only have to wait a tenth of a second to see your wifi network and connect.

 

I think that's too fast, and the highest value of closed-source corporate firmware for wifi routers, is a one-second becon interval.

 

This reduces the energy output of your beacons by 10x, no matter how small the power may be.

 

Since there are probably a billion wifi routers in the world, all constantly active and never sleeping, maybe if we all used the lowest transmit power, and 1 second becon intervals, it would add up to measurable savings.

 

Since this post is already a lot to scroll through, I'll test my television network activity and update you in a new post.  I block all of its network activity when it is setup this way, but it boots up using the existing wifi, unless I reset the network settings every time and re-enter the psssword for both networks.  Yeah, now that is inconvenient, but would save power.

 

How far are you going to look into this topic?  You have already splashed your feet in the water, why not jump in?

[E-waste]

@Ali AnasLast update.

 

I can't send you my wireshark logs because of mac addresses.

 

For the short time that I had my smart tv on, I was successfully blocking all activity for a bit.  So I rebooted the tv, without unplugging it.

 

It somehow nearly entirely bypassed my firewall, and transmitted and recieved an overall total of around a few thousand packets, in just a couple minutes.

 

So how much data?

 

It is around 4-5 MB.

 

There are around a hundred or so different IP addresses listed in the TCP listing, so just rebooting the tv (and physically unplugging it soon after) resulted in a lot of different network connections.

 

Now, just think about the energy involved in each individual connection, to every hop in the connection for each destination IP address (and usually a reverse connection for each one.  When I rebooted, the software quickly saw itself blocked and started reaching out to

 

akamai.net

 

And got everything to connect again.  Imagine how much network activity is involved in having just the display idling at the menu.

 

Some smart tv apps auto-boot with at least 7-8 unique domains, such as Netflix.  And it does this on every wakeup and reboot.  Apple tv app, on my device and one or two others.  All this network activity, and I haven't intentionally started a single program.  From two home screen ads, and the apps autoloading, to the telemetry collection EVERY time a key is pressed, it's a quite a lot.  What I measured was only a couple minutes.  Imagine what it takes for a few hours of use per day, switching between a couple services (going back to home screen) and having ads and telemetry reloaded.

 

Now, mulitply that by 300 days per year, (conservative estimate) and then by the number of smart televisions in use world-wide.

[Mark Kaine]

This thread breaks the gazillion word count,  so im gonna go ahead and say

Quote

Note: I unplug my PC from power socket.

this is why... you should never do this regularly,  get a new CMOS battery,  if lucky it's going to fix it.