The CMOS battery on my original Intel D865GLCLK motherboard just died.  I had rebooted the server and it did not re-start itself.  I think I've had the server for about 5 years...  It just said "bios not configured, press F4 to continue"

 

Pressing F4 got me to the BIOS setup screens where I found the date set back to 1/1/2002, and the boot sequence attempting to boot from one of my hard disks.

 

I just happened to have another battery, borrowed from another motherboard, put it in, reset all the BIOS settings, and I'm back up once more. (the spare battery is not new, but it will do until I can get another)

 

At least I now know how my motherboard reacts when the CMOS battery dies....

 

Joe L.

Same happened to my Asus N4L-VM DH.

 

But this was a little bit more user friendly, because it automatically loads the default bios settings and will not get stuck with a "press X msg"

Yes, date and boot sequence have had to be adjusted.

 

 

But since the Asus board has no jumper for resetting CMOS, this "battery trick" became useful for me the one or other time, when i messed up my IGD settings and did not get any graphics output until i removed the battery.

 

 

Glad to read that unRAID is able to run through 5 years without any difficulties.