My buddy swore a paperclip would work as a CMOS jumper... he was half right

Was troubleshooting a no-boot issue on my old Dell Optiplex last weekend. BIOS was acting up, needed to clear the CMOS. I couldn't find my actual jumper cap anywhere. My buddy Mike said "just use a paperclip, it's the same thing." Bent one into a U shape, touched the pins for 10 seconds. Booted right up after that, but then the PC started throwing date/time errors every time I powered it on. Turns out the paperclip was too thick and bent one of the pins slightly. Had to carefully bend it back with some tweezers. Never again. Anyone else got a good story about using the wrong tool and messing something up worse?

2 comments

2 Comments

danielmartinez26d ago

Wait, are you saying the paperclip actually worked but then messed up the pins? That's rough... I did the same thing on an old HP motherboard a few years back but used a staple instead. Worked fine for clearing the BIOS but I noticed later the pins were bent at a weird angle. Had to use a mechanical pencil tip to straighten them out one by one. Now I just keep a few extra jumper caps in my parts drawer... learned that lesson the hard way. The date/time errors are probably from the CMOS battery losing its connection with that bent pin too.

karenw9026d ago

Oh man, paperclips are notorious for this exact thing. What saved me was actually using a pair of small needle-nose tweezers instead. You just touch both pins at the same time with the metal tips and hold for a few seconds. It's way safer because you have way more control and the tweezers arent going to bend the pins. Plus you dont have to worry about the thickness of the wire like with a paperclip or staple. I keep a dedicated pair in my tool drawer now just for that purpose. After your pin got bent back with tweezers did the date/time errors finally stop or is it still acting up?