Fixed a boot loop with a paperclip and 20 minutes of pure stubbornness

Got a call from a buddy in Austin last Tuesday, his Dell OptiPlex started looping right after a Windows update. He'd already tried unplugging everything, reseating RAM, even swapped the PSU with one from his parts bin. Nothing. I showed up with my usual bag of tricks, USB installer, spare drive, the works. While I was digging around, I noticed the CMOS battery was sitting loose in its holder, just barely making contact. I grabbed a paperclip, bent it to hold the battery down, and the thing POSTed like nothing ever happened. He's been running it for 5 days now, no issues. Has anyone else had a weird fix like that where the obvious stuff was fine but some dumb little physical thing was the whole problem?

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