Alert! System battery voltage is low.

I would suggest you press F2 to enter your CMOS settings.  Write down on paper all the settings or try using the Print Screen button on you keyboard.  Either way, you should have this information on hand anyway.  Pay special attention to your IDE Primary Master and IDE Secondary Slave hard drive settings as you may need to manually enter these following the CMOS battery.

Note: Most of the newer system BIOS will automatically detect your hard drive info, but just in case, make a copy of your CMOS setup is good to have. 

When you exit the CMOS settup, select "Exit Without Saving" (or similar wording), just in case you made a change and didn't realize it. 

Look in your computer manual and see what type of battery you will need to get for replacement.  The flat coin shape battery is used in most systems sold in the past couple of years or so (CR2032), but check your documentation to be sure you are purchasing the correct replacement battery. 

This would be a good time to do a thorough backup.

Note: use a grounding mat or wrist strap to prevent ESD (ElectroStatic Discharge).

Next, shut down your computer and unplug it from the wall. Remove the case panel, locate and carefully remove the battery (note the orintation) Plus (+) sign should be up if your replacing with the CR2032 battery.  Put in the new battery making sure it is in tight. 

Restart you computer to make sure the Alert message has disappeared and that all your hardware is being detected.  If so, assemble you case and your done.  If you get any error messages, you may need to go into your CMOS setup and manually enter some information that you wrote down.  If you are still having problems, go with the BIOS Defaults.  With modern systems, it's often unnecessary to reenter every CMOS Setup parameter from scratch. Suitable default settings are now typically incorporated into the BIOS itself, so you can get a system running without messing with individual entries (you just need to enter the drives properly). You can find this as a "Select BIOS Defaults" option in your CMOS Setup main menu.  BIOS defaults will generally not optimize your system's performance, but they will get you out of a tough spot when you have trouble after changing one or more settings.

FYI:  Many computer users use the terms BIOS and CMOS interchangeably.  However, BIOS and CMOS RAM are not the same thing - though the two are related. BIOS refers to the firmware instructions located on the BIOS ROM chip, while the CMOS refers to the low-power RAM that holds the system's setup parameters. BIOS reads the CMOS RAM into main memory at start time, and provides the Setup routine, which allows you to change the contents of CMOS, but the CMOS RAM device is a totally different chip.  It's important that you understand the difference.

Good Luck

         If all else fails, replace the battery. It would seem that there is a rash of bad batteries being reported. Take it out and go to your local RadioShack, BestBuy or similar store to get a replacement, costs about $5.

                                                                                                                                                               7

Buonaparte,

Thanks for using the Dell Community Forum.

I would like you to check the surge protector.  There has been many, many cases where that message is appearing only because of the surge protector.  Try plugging it directly into the outlet and see what happens.

---

DELL-MichaelC wrote:

I would like you to check the surge protector.  There has been many, many cases where that message is appearing only because of the surge protector.  Try plugging it directly into the outlet and see what happens.

---

Hello,

I was going through the same situation with a near 10-month old Dim8250 (perfect in every other way).  I also disconnected my surge protector on the advice of a Dell tech and that solved the problem of low battery alerts.  NOW, the problem that I cannot get an answer to (and is driving me crazy!) is how to protect my computer and data now ???  We live in an area with frequent pop-up lightning storms.   And what about common power surges?

Although this stopped the "system battery voltage low" alert; it doesn't seem like a solution to me if it costs me my computer.  Please ..... please, this seems to be a common problem, what have others been doing after this so-called solution?

Thanks for your time.
 

Thanks for the reply!  The mgr at Dell tech support had told me it happens with most surge protectors.  And, it may take months after changing protectors before the message shows up again.  BTW, I had been using that surge protector ($38) for 9 months before the alert message showed up.

So, I suppose I'll have to go buy another brand of surge protector (or more) and see if it will at least keep me going for a few more months.  May I ask what brand you have that seems to be working just fine?

Seems like Dell should have to pay for the surge protectors.

Thank you,

MeLani

I havn´t connect my PC to a surge protector. Last week I get the same error for two times when he was three weeks old. The error has gone and I don´t know why. (Dimension 8300 with P4-HT 3.0 Ghz and 1Gb of Ram)

I´ve postet this in

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_bios&message.id=23059

Sascha