Clearing cmos
 

An old Gateway Essential 400. Lost password. I've removed the big, round NiCad. What else do I need to do in order to reset cmos? Is there a jumper, or a backup battery or a separate cmos battery?

Just look for the little round silver thingy that looks like a watch battery and pull that and leave it out for about an hour. That SHOULD work, not positive though. Good luck!

EDIT* oops, didn't read your post thoroughly, that's the only way I know of doing it...sorry

most motherboards have a jumper that you have to short out in order to clear the cmos... without the manual i really dont know how to tell you to find the jumper...

http://www.hwupgrade.it/stampa_artic...2/abit_4_s.jpg

This is for a different mobo, but I would imagine your Cmos jumper is right around the battery.

See the big, round silver battery ?
See the little thing above it, tall, thin and beige ?

That object is the Cmos jumper and it needs to moved as the below pictures show.

[||] | - It current will look a bit like this

You need to make it look like this...

| [||] - The lines are prongs from the mobo, and the brackets are the jumper.


Also, this is just hypothetical since I don't know what mobo you are using. If you have a digital camera, take a few picture of the mobo and somebody will ID it.

Your board probably looks like this
http://www.boomspeed.com/mrcactus/b6_1.JPG
If so, a zoomed-in view of part "T" looks like this.
http://www.boomspeed.com/mrcactus/250890119.jpg

Move the jumper from the two pins it's on to the two the red bracket points to, start it up, go into the settings to make sure it worked, turn the computer off, put the jumper back, and start it up again.