CMOS battery

[DENISE19]

Hi. My Pavillion Notebook laptop is running slowly and displaying all the symptoms of a failing CMOS battery

but I can’t find out if my laptop has such a battery. I can’t get the back off to check.

any help much appreciated 

thanks

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Yes, your notebook has a CMOS (also known as a Real Time Clock RTC) battery.

The battery part number is listed in chapter 3 of the service manual at the link below.

c04438537.pdf (hp.com)

The RTC battery removal and replacement procedure can be found in chapter 6.

Looking at the illustration, it appears that the RTC battery is a standard CR2032 coin cell battery also used in desktop PC's.

It appears the notebook will require extensive disassembly to replace the battery.

[DENISE19]

Hi. Thanks for reply.  Do you think CMOS battery is the cause of poor performance?

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

You're very welcome.

All the CMOS battery does is maintain the system BIOS and clock settings, so unless your PC's date and time are always incorrect, or you are getting CMOS 502 errors when you start the notebook it is highly doubtful that the CMOS battery is causing any performance issues.

'Running slowly' is so subjective a problem, it could be anything.

Looking at your PC's product specs, it is definitely a marginal performing PC even when brand new.

HP Pavilion 15-n273sa TouchSmart Notebook PC Product Specifications | HP® Support

The processor is near the bottom for performance specs, 4 GB of memory is not enough to run Windows nowadays, and a 5,400 RPM mechanical hard drive is old technology. 

I don't even believe that they sell notebooks with 2.5" mechanical hard drives anymore.

Those type of drives slow things down as they age and accumulate files.

The only thing you can do to try an increase performance without spending any money would be to run the disk cleanup utility, check the 'cleanup system files' button on the lower left corner of the program, check all of the boxes to delete files and then run the defragment and optimize drives utility.

Hardware improvements:

It would take a considerable amount of work to replace the 2.5" mechanical hard drive with a 2.5" solid state drive.

You can read chapter 6 of the service manual for how to remove the hard drive.

The other thing you can do pretty easily would be to open the service door on the bottom of the PC and if the PC has two memory slots, you can install a 4 GB DDR3L-1600 memory chip in the empty slot and double the system memory easily and fairly inexpensively.  See chapter 5.

This should be a compatible 4 GB memory chip.

Crucial 4GB DDR3L-1600 SODIMM | CT51264BF160B | Crucial UK

Crucial RAM CT51264BF160B 4GB DDR3 1600 MHz CL11 Laptop Memory , Green : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & A...

[DENISE19]

Hi.  Thanks so much for reply. Will try RAM upgrade and your other suggestions 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance.

If you want to take on replacing the hard drive with a solid-state drive (SSD), let me know and I will give you a recommendation for a SSD.

[DENISE19]

Hi. Thanks again for your help. Yes a link for Ssd would be appreciated.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

This would be the drive I recommend:

WD Blue SA510 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD/Solid State Drive LN127001 - WDS100T3B0A | SCAN UK

If you don't need 1 TB of storage space, there is also a 500 GB capacity available.

WD Blue SA510 500GB 2.5" SATA SSD/Solid State Drive LN127000 - WDS500G3B0A | SCAN UK

I don't see any for sale on Amazon.UK.

[DENISE19]

Hi. Thanks for reply. Much appreciated 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.