Clearing CMOS settings

There are a few ways to clear CMOS settings. Actually, when your mainboard CMOS battery has begun to run out, your CMOS settings would probably getting closer to default. There's one common reason why we need to clear the CMOS settings, that is: when we want to make adjustment to the CMOS settings, but it's password protected. Clearing the CMOS also means that clearing the password.

To clear the CMOS settings, we can use one of the following methods, depending on the mainboard type. Usually for older mainboard, we can just remove the battery and turn the computer on for a while and then reinstate the battery. This is quite easy.

But if you can't remove the battery (which is probably soldered on the mainboard), look for a Clear CMOS jumper. Change the jumper position. To do this, you'd better follow your mainboard manual. If you don't have, don't worry to have experiment on it. But make sure that the jumper you are making experiment with is the Clear CMOS jumper.

Some branded computers make it easier for technician to clear the settings. Try looking for a push on/off switch. If you can see the switch, you can just push it and then the settings are automatically reset.

The tips above are suitable when you can't access through the boot process, because of the password requirement on booting. But if you can boot, but cannot enter the CMOS, you can still use an easier way to remove the CMOS settings, that's by using freeware to clear it. Here's a link to the freeware:

http://www.biosman.com/downloads/clrcmos.exe ---> clear CMOS program
http://www.biosman.com/downloads/killcmos.zip ---> wipe CMOS passwords

Both photos found under search with Creative Commons.