CMOS Reset

📅 31 Dec 2021

In my quest for solving my bluetooth issues on my HP laptop dual-booting Manjaro and Mint, I read on some forum about performing a CMOS reset. I had no clue what that was. I did a quick search and found out it involved removing the button cell battery from your computers motherboard.

Other than that, I didn’t do any research before I did this - fortunately for me I didn’t run into any issues. Seriously, very luck for me. Always do your research!

Once I had my laptop apart and couldn’t find the button cell battery, it occurred to me, “Why don’t I just unplug the battery”? I did and set it aside for 5 minutes and went to do something else.

I plugged it back in, restarted my computer, and lo and behold, it told me that a successful CMOS reset had been performed. But, I couldn’t get into Manjaro because it could not be authenticated. So I logged into Mint to see if I could figure out what was going on and bam, no internet. I had a momentary panic but figured I would just restart and see if that fixed it. When I restarted, I dug into BIOS a little bit and discovered that secure boot had been re-enabled. I fixed that and boom, I could log into Manjaro. Once on Manjaro both bluetooth and wifi were working so I was hopeful. Then, I restarted once more and now Mint was working perfectly.

Does bluetooth work after periods of inactivity??

No.

That would be too easy. Unfortunately, this topic will have to be continued once I can actually figure out bluetooth. Honestly though, I’m about to give up on it and just dig out my old wired earbuds. I’m so sick of spending 30 minutes to an hour every day trying to troubleshoot a very minor issue.

In fact, I spent five hours of my day off trying to troubleshoot this more. Sometimes, it is best to just move on. I am at that point now. Sometimes I make a major issue out of something minor and then I have to course-correct and get things back in order. This is a minor issue and thus I won’t spend any more time on it. Wired earbuds for the cafe and when I’m watching a movie while indoor cycling I’ll just restart my computer before I get ready.

💬 Looking for comments?