What Is a CMOS Battery?
A computer’s motherboard is made up of many essential components including the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) battery. Without this battery, a computer cannot properly function or even boot at all. While a CMOS battery is designed to last up to 10 years, it is possible for it to weaken and suffer failure, which will become evident in the computer’s performance. The function of the CMOS battery is to provide continuous power to the CMOS chip on the computer’s motherboard. The CMOS chip stores essential system information and settings such as date and time, hard disk type, boot drive order, floppy drive type and BIOS settings. The CMOS chip requires the power source of the battery to sustain and preserve these settings. A CMOS battery can begin to weaken and fail over time, depending on the environment the computer is exposed to. Some symptoms of a weakening battery are consistent changes in system date and time, system component drivers requiring re-installation every ti
