Spent 11 hours on a laptop that just needed a CMOS reset

Customer brought in a Dell that wouldn't post, and I swapped RAM, reseated the CPU, tried a known good power adapter, and even reflowed the board over two days at my bench in Tucson. Turned out the CMOS battery was dead and holding the board in a weird state, a $2 part I skipped because the symptoms looked like a bad stick of RAM. How do you all decide when to stop chasing the fancy fix and just check the cheap stuff first?

0 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

0 Comments

No comments yet

Be the first to share your thoughts on this discussion.