I'm shooting from the hip on this one, but I've had the 840 G3, G5, and G6 and now a 640 G9, so thanks to Corporate America, I've had a few of these (I don't know which one it was, but one of them had an issue and was stupid cheap). I might be wrong or miss something critical.
Corrupted CMOS RAM settings cause this a lot of the time, and sometimes a corrupted BIOS—but generally, it's the CMOS RAM that has issues. If the BIOS was corrupted, the machines would automatically restore it from the shadow copy kept in secured address space on the backup EEPROM and very clearly notify you of a BIOS recovery event, even logging it in the BIOS. I very much doubt it's the BIOS here. Pull the primary battery connector (the G5 and up use a wire, the G1-G3 use a battery you physically have to remove), and the pigtail wire on the CMOS battery (there's no need to remove it from the chassis - just unplug it). Hold the power button for 30 seconds to clear the CMOS RAM, and plug the CMOS battery in and then the main battery. Plug the laptop into power if need be and wait ~1-5 minutes, it's normal for it to take a minute due to the BIOS flipping out when you do this and checking the signatures closely.
As soon as the BIOS passes, it will have you press Enter, and then it will go back to default settings. You might need to enter the BIOS and reset the clock but Win10 and Win11 generally will sync with the BIOS so this may not be needed.
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I have also seen intermittently failing RAM cause a similar issue since these machines are very unforgiving about cheap RAM modules and when the RAM does fail, they will often just flat out refuse to boot; but if the RAM works well enough, then it could fail in ways like this where new modules fix the issue.
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I have also seen intermittently failing RAM cause a similar issue since these machines are very unforgiving about cheap RAM modules and when the RAM does fail or the integrity checks do not like it, they will often just flat out refuse to boot; but if the RAM works well enough, then it could fail in ways like this where new modules fix the issue.
I'm shooting from the hip on this one, but I've had the 840 G3, G5, and G6 and now a 640 G9, so thanks to Corporate America, I've had a few of these (I don't know which one it was, but one of them had an issue and was stupid cheap). I might be wrong or miss something critical.
Corrupted CMOS RAM settings cause this a lot of the time, and sometimes a corrupted BIOS—but generally, it's the CMOS RAM that has issues. If the BIOS was corrupted, the machines would automatically restore it from the shadow copy kept in secured address space on the backup EEPROM and very clearly notify you of a BIOS recovery event, even logging it in the BIOS. I very much doubt it's the BIOS here. Pull the primary battery connector (the G5 and up use a wire, the G1-G3 use a battery you physically have to remove), and the pigtail wire on the CMOS battery (there's no need to remove it from the chassis - just unplug it). Hold the power button for 30 seconds to clear the CMOS RAM, and plug the CMOS battery in and then the main battery. Plug the laptop into power if need be and wait ~1-5 minutes, it's normal for it to take a minute due to the BIOS flipping out when you do this and checking the signatures closely.
As soon as the BIOS passes, it will have you press Enter, and then it will go back to default settings. You might need to enter the BIOS and reset the clock but Win10 and Win11 generally will sync with the BIOS so this may not be needed.
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I have also seen intermittently failing RAM cause a similar issue since these machines are very unforgiving about cheap RAM modules and when the RAM does fail, they will often just flat out refuse to boot; but if the RAM works well enough, then it could fail in ways like this where new modules fix the issue.
I'm shooting from the hip on this one, but I've had the G3, G5, and G6 and now a 640 G9, so thanks to Corporate America, I've had a few of these (I don't know which one it was, but one of them had an issue and was stupid cheap). I might be wrong or miss something critical.
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I'm shooting from the hip on this one, but I've had the 840 G3, G5, and G6 and now a 640 G9, so thanks to Corporate America, I've had a few of these (I don't know which one it was, but one of them had an issue and was stupid cheap). I might be wrong or miss something critical.
Corrupted CMOS RAM settings cause this a lot of the time, and sometimes a corrupted BIOS—but generally, it's the CMOS RAM that has issues. If the BIOS was corrupted, the machines would automatically restore it from the shadow copy kept in secured address space on the backup EEPROM and very clearly notify you of a BIOS recovery event, even logging it in the BIOS. I very much doubt it's the BIOS here. Pull the primary battery connector (the G5 and up use a wire, the G1-G3 use a battery you physically have to remove), and the pigtail wire on the CMOS battery (there's no need to remove it from the chassis - just unplug it). Hold the power button for 30 seconds to clear the CMOS RAM, and plug the CMOS battery in and then the main battery. Plug the laptop into power if need be and wait ~1-5 minutes, it's normal for it to take a minute due to the BIOS flipping out when you do this and checking the signatures closely.
As soon as the BIOS passes, it will have you press Enter, and then it will go back to default settings. You might need to enter the BIOS and reset the clock but Win10 and Win11 generally will sync with the BIOS so this may not be needed.
I'm shooting from the hip on this one, but I've had the G3, G5, and G6 and now a 640 G9, so thanks to Corporate America, I've had a few of these (I don't know which one it was, but one of them had an issue and was stupid cheap). I might be wrong or miss something critical.
Corrupted CMOS RAM settings cause this a lot of the time, and sometimes a corrupted BIOS—but generally, it's the CMOS RAM that has issues. If the BIOS was corrupted, the machines would automatically restore it from the shadow copy kept in secured address space on the backup EEPROM and very clearly notify you of a BIOS recovery event, even logging it in the BIOS. I very much doubt it's the BIOS here. Pull the primary battery connector (the G5 and up use a wire, the G1-G3 use a battery you physically have to remove), and the pigtail wire on the CMOS battery (there's no need to remove it from the chassis - just unplug it). Hold the power button for 30 seconds to clear the CMOS RAM, and plug the CMOS battery in and then the main battery. Plug the laptop into power if need be and wait ~1-5 minutes, it's normal for it to take a minute due to the BIOS flipping out when you do this and checking the signatures closely.
As soon as the BIOS passes, it will have you press Enter, and then it will go back to default settings. You might need to enter the BIOS and reset the clock but Win10 and Win11 generally will sync with the BIOS so this may not be needed.