Have to clear BIOS for laptop to boot

[vektron]

I have 3 Lenovo E540 Thinkpads. 1 of them works fine but the other 2 will not boot unless I remove battery and power cord and unplug the bios battery for a while which clears the bios. But once I completely shut it down and try to restart I get nothing. I tried to update the bios but when it goes to reboot it does nothing and then I have to remove all power and unplug bios battery for a while. All 3 have clean installs of Windows 10. I got all 3 of these used so I don’t know the history on them.

[Rustys]

Can you access the BIOS screen and manually reset them to factory (load defaults) through there?

[vektron]

Yes I have tried that

[Rustys]

Do the affected systems post?
Does any information come up on the screen?
Are there any error messages that appear?
Any lights any sounds?
When you try is the systems plugged into power and battery?
Have you tried just power and no battery?
Is the BIOS not saving the changes?

[vektron]

Have tried without batter, just battery. Will not do anything unless I unplug cmos battery and clear the bios. There is a lite on one of the keys that lights up when it boots and that does not light up unless I clear the bios. when I push the power button I get nothing at all unless I clear the bios. I have tried default settings in bios but makes no difference. It will restart fine but if I shut it off and try to start it I get nothing.

[Rustys]

You did replace the CMOS battery?
If not try it on one of them see if that makes a change.

[vektron]

yes I have tried that. I am going to try to update bios using a flash drive. I will let you know.

[Rustys]

Make sure to download the proper BIOS for each system.

Thank you for keeping us informed.

Have you checked that everything is connected properly and have gone through and reseated the RAM, HDD, DVD (if there is one)?
The only other thing is that something has come loose form the Motherboard and or the motherboard is faulty.

I got all 3 of these used so I don’t know the history on them.

Like you stated you do not know the history on them so there is no telling how they were treated by the previous owner.

[jmarket]

Like you stated you do not know the history on them so there is no telling how they were treated by the previous owner.

This. Sounds like an aging PC more than anything else.

I’ve looked through 5+ threads throughout the past 10 years with the same “PC only boots after removing CMOS battery and putting it back in” issue, and this is the only solution I’ve found, unspecific to your model.
I then unplugged computer held down power button for 10 seconds, pulled cmos jumper then replugged in computer it powered up, then once boot finished I shutdown windows unplugged computer replaced jumper.

You mentioned they all have clean installs of Windows, but have you tried reformatting again?

[Rustys]

@vektron do you have any new information.

[veeg]

Any updates for us? After 48 hrs this thread will be closed.