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I unplugged my laptop from the power source. Then I opened it up and once inside, I disconnected the battery from the motherboard, and then disconnected the CMOS battery as well.

I then held the power button for 30 seconds so as to drain any residual power that may still have been in the circuit.

Then I let the laptop sit like that for about half an hour before reconnecting everything and rebooting the device. After the laptop turned on, the date and time was set to the time that I had shut down the system earlier, however, none of the bios settings had changed.

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  • The CMOS battery is primarily for the real-time clock. UEFI tends to rely on some kind of flash memory for setting and log storage these days. Case in point several years back a firmware bug which meant the machine refused to boot if the firmware log was full combined with a Linux bug that would write a lot of log entries essentially caused a line of bricked laptops if the owner dared to install Linux. anandtech.com/show/6713/…
    – Mokubai
    Jul 11, 2021 at 13:01

2 Answers 2

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Another way of resetting the BIOS is to install a new BIOS version, or even install the existing version again over itself.

Only download the BIOS from the manufacturer of your computer or that of motherboard, not from any third-party websites.

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  • I have updated my BIOS software to the latest release from acer. However all of the options are greyed out. Do you have any idea how to fix this?
    – darcl
    Jul 11, 2021 at 13:48
  • Which options? Adding a screenshot to your post might help.
    – harrymc
    Jul 11, 2021 at 14:11
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The idea of draining the residual electrical charge in the computer does not reset BIOS anymore (at least certainly not normally).

You need to reset BIOS from within BIOS, that is, start in BIOS and use the Reset feature. I have done this numerous times. You may not need to reset BIOS to do what you are trying to do, but you must work within BIOS to make the changes you want.

You do not need to reset the BIOS to add passwords. You can if you wish to. But I wanted to make clear you do not need to reset to add passwords.

You said (after my initial post) "I didn't set it before I tampered with the BIOS, so now I can't change a few settings such as secure boot."

It may be that the BIOS is beyond salvation now. Probably use the laptop until you can replace the computer.

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  • I seem to have forgotten to add this detail to my original post, but the reason that I want to reset my BIOS is so that I can set a Supervisor password, I didn't set it before I tampered with the BIOS, so now I can't change a few settings such as secure boot. So the reset function of the BIOS doesn't help me unfortunately.
    – darcl
    Jul 11, 2021 at 12:34
  • You can make these setting changes once in BIOS and have reset it.
    – John
    Jul 11, 2021 at 12:35
  • @darcl I suggest you ask a new question about your actual problem. Please describe in greater detail there. Because I haven’t heard of the need for a supervisor password (unless one is set already, of course) and neither of the need to reset BIOS before setting one.
    – Daniel B
    Jul 11, 2021 at 13:01

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