# Toshiba Laptop Bad RTC Battery Error



## jota_rookie (Feb 25, 2005)

I have a Toshiba 1805-S207 laptop with me which is given to me by a friend to fix. Just to give you some background, this friend spilled tea on the laptop when the laptop lid was actually closed and the laptop was not running (shutdown). She said none of the tea went inside the laptop (as the lid was closed) and she cleaned it up and waited one day before starting it up and it never started.

Thats where I enter the picture and the laptop is not starting. I know how to open laptops etc carefully, and i opened it up, and just looked around and cleaned some dust etc and put it back together. Then the laptop fired up and I got the error

**** Bad RTC Battery ****
**** Check CMOS Sum ****
Press F1 for help.

Pressing F1 takes me into BIOS Settings. Toshiba's website says that once you're in the BIOS area, restore the settings to default by pressing home key and then save changes and exit. The laptop should reboot and everything should be fine. But no, the same error comes back again, no matter how many times you restart. 

Toshiba's website says that if the error repeats, take it to an authorized shop. Good advice, but my friend, a student cannot afford their service charges. And the laptop is out of warranty. I know computers well (what I mean is that I am not just any average user who does not know the usual internal workings, how to open a laptop etc) and i know about RTC batteries. I did some more research and on some forum, I found that RTC battery may be actually dead (Toshiba's support also said that that could happen - especially laptops which have been left unused for more than one or two months. That much time had indeed passed between when the laptop stopped working and when I got it). So I was hopeful that the problem is most likely the RTC battery is dead and it will be fine if I get a new working one and replace it. So I orderd a new RTC battery (exactly same as what was inside) and carefully opened everything again, replaced the battery and carefully closed everything back to how it should be. Trouble is, the Bad RTC battery error still keeps coming.  

If anybody has any advice, please help me. Thanks.

Joe


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## RabidBunny (Mar 19, 2005)

*Bad RTC Battery*

I was told by someone who spoke to a Toshiba Customer Service Rep that the 6000 series (not sure how your model related) of laptops have a known issue with the RTC (real time clock) battery and overheating. What happens is the battery burns out, and leaks acid on the motherboard. He attempted to get the rep to admit this problem in writing, but they refused. He called and tried to get another rep to admit this issue, but he hung up on him.

I recieved the same RTC error about a year ago. Shortly after, they replaced the motherboard. And unfortunately the I have the same issue again. So I guess another motherboard again....


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