Today I cleaned up my case and rear fan and cpu fan and the gunk in the heatsink fins, after removing the heatsink fan. I used a vacuum cleaner with a soft attachment and about a dozen Q- tips. I do this about once every 6 months. This is the second time on this machine which is nearly 12 months old. It is a Chaintech VFN4 in an Antec 1050B mid-tower, AMD64 3500+.

And each time I do this, I have to reset the BIOS settings for date and time, disable C&Q, and disable the fan control, reset shutdown temps, and other things.

I thought the function of the CMOS battery was to keep these settings. According to Everest Ultimate edition, VBAT Battery is reading @2.64 volts, therfore I assume the CMOS battery is working.

I've had many computers, but I've never encountered the loss of BIOS settings merely by unplugging the computer.

I have the latest BIOS available on the Chaintech site.

Any ideas?

-Bob

Well, if it was you who reset the BIOS, of course it's normal that BIOS loose all of your settings.

But if it was the BIOS who reset automatically, then could be it's because of the battery doesn't give enough power anymore, or there's something who made a short circuit in the BIOS jumper.