18 thoughts on - How Do I Remove A Battery

• Pliers?

• Yup, looks like that tab needs moved out of the way and the battery removed. Down seems to be the shortest path to my eyes. However, I could see why one might also try right.

  –Blake

  Michael Hennebry wrote the following on 4/22/2014 3:08 PM:

• How does it look from the backside?

• I would suggest a 22oz claw hammer and a more appropriate venue.

  John

• Michael Hennebry wrote:
  Dumb question: have you tried pushing the tab *down*? Maybe it’ll release, then slide up?

  mark

• ‘I replaced a battery re3cently on a board with a similar battery holder. I just bent the tab that comes up over the edge of the battery and pulled out the battery then bgent it back and pushed a new batteryh in, using some pressure on the battery to flex the tab. when I was done it didn’t look quite straight, but it worked.

  Fred

• 1- why not consider contacting MSI and ask?

  http://us.msi.com/about/contact-us/

  2- try rotating tab and battery?

• Looking at the picture, does the tab toggle to the right. There is a slot that leads me to believe that if you pushed the tab to the righ, it might release the battery.

  john

• > There is a slot that leads me to believe that if you pushed
  > the tab to the righ, it might release the battery.

  as i view the jpg, rotation would be to left, away from the
  “VBAT1” label, or, away from edge of pcb.

• Hello Blake,

  Right and I already saw stuff like that: it’s a push down the tab out of the way, while you hold it down and pull away the battery. It could also be a rotating tab, to push to the right out of the battery extraction way.

  Regards,

• >> the battery removed. Down seems to be the shortest path
  >> to my eyes. However, I could see why one might also try
  >> right.
  > the tab out of the way, while you hold it down and pull away
  > the battery. It could also be a rotating tab, to push to the
  > right out of the battery extraction way.

  if tab moves, rotates, and, if one moves tab to _right_, how is that going to move retainer out of way?

  moving tab to _right_, aka, towards pcb edge, retainer would have to come out of battery holder.

  if one move tab to _left_, aka, away from edge of pcb, retainer would rotate back into battery holder and then be out of way.

  in a further consideration of my 1st post to this thread, best solution would be my 1st suggestion, call MSI.

  i ran a search via ixquick.com and found several post with suggestions of bending tab out of way, with op replies that all that did way make retainer fit back loosely, tho that may not be a problem, if battery holder has contacts on both + and – sides of battery.

  being that one poster to thread ask for a view of + side of holder, to which op has not responded, it is of not known if there are contacts shown for + side of battery, so bending of retainer may not be an option.

• I’d already got the battery out. My apologies for the delay in the announcement.

  An hour or two ago I replaced said battery with one scavenged from the dead body of its predecessor. Success. I’ve ascertained that the motherboard retains time between power plug-pullings.

• Looks to me like there’s a groove in front of the tab, with a runner in it. Does it pull in a direction away from the motherboard (i.e up, if it’s vertically mounted) , hence sliding the battery out of the holder?

  D

• <<>>

  not a problem here. i enjoyed the bellow listed search that i ran.

  some mainboards have a capacitor paralleled with battery to allow quick change with out loss of cmos settings. i have even seen some mainboards with a small tubular shaped
  ‘instrument’ type lithium cell to maintain voltage while button battery is changed.

  glad to hear you have battery changed.

  i did some more searching after my last post to thread and i would have replied with it, had i not had to go ‘out an bout’.

  this is what i found, and which i had found last night.

  i ran another ixquick.com search and this time i changed search term to just “cmos battery holder”.

  from this new search, i found a link which led to a page at;

  http://search.blekko.com/

  where, after several attempts, lead to page;

  https://blekko.com/#?q=cmos+battery+holder

  which shows 6 views of battery holders to right side of page. a middle click on group at top left, lead to;

  https://blekko.com/#?q=cmos%20battery%20holder&images=1

  where top left pic shows similar holder to what you show. a middle click on pic lead to;

  http://www.componex-electronics.com/files/BatteryHolderCR2032.jpg

  from which i got a firm understanding of mechanics of holder.

  next i found another link to a pic of above holder mounted to a pcb that gives better understanding of how tab locates to battery;

  http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/img/battery_upright.jpg

  from this, i how can see how tab is moved in direction of battery + side to allow battery removal.

  so, does all this confirm what you found?

• Yes.
  …/battery_upright.jpg depicts precisely the kind of holder I have. For some reason, I never thought to include holder in my search.

• my first searches included msi pcb model along with ‘cmos battery holder’.

  first hits where in millions when i used ‘msi’ and pbc model, i was getting too many false hits, even with negating bad hit words, i only dropped hits to 100k’s.

  dropping the make and model was the key as that got 1k’s of hit. further negating words from bad hits dropped to 1k’s of hits.

  by dropping words ‘remove’ and ‘howto’ and then using just
  ‘cmos battery holder’ returned 182 hits and with more negating,
  “blekko.com” kept showing and that is what lead to finding what i did.

  something i have found thru many years many years of web searching and using;

  ixquick.com/eng/advanced-search.html

  is that a little playing with “-” / “+” of words and along with a lot of perseverance, one will usually find what one is looking for. ;-)

  then again, had you called MSI from start, you would have had you answer much easier. ((GBWG))

  anyway, glad you have your battery changed.

  something i will suggest, being that you pulled cell from a dead board, consider getting another cell.

  then, wrap cell and package it is in with ‘saran wrap’, squeeze out as much a possible, then wrap with aluminum foil. place in freezer and it will be waiting for you when you need it. do allow 12 – 16 hours for warm up before using.

  i have kept batteries and cells in freezer for over 10 years and they still give over 1 year ‘shelf life’ service. i do not recommend doing such with “silicone” batteries’, aka, “gel cell”
  batteries.

  also, when you change a cmos cell, you may do so with power supply turned on to preserve cmos settings.

• Makes sense to me. I’ll do that the next time I do a mail order.

  That I did not know.
  ‘Tis contrary to a lot of other advice, but it makes sense.

  Other things that I might want to preserve include two power supplies, an IDE-only CD reader, an IDE-only DVR writer and an AGP video card. I do not have a lot of convenient storage space on my main floor. Ideally, none of the five will be used for a while. Suggestions regarding storage?

  I also have four 1-GB DDR2 memory cards. My two exant computers have two 2-GB DDR2
  memory cards each and room for two more cards, As the information does not seem to be on the cards, I will probably have to do a search to discovery whether the old cards can keep up with the new.

  Supposing they can, I am debating between prompt install and waiting until I need more memory. If I put them in an anti-static bag first, would the freezer trick work with the memory cards?

• oops. should have read;

  “squeeze out as much _air_ as possible when folding”.

  be careful of ‘mail order’ batteries. not all supply cells and batteries with current expiration dates. even tho such places sell a lot of cells and batteries, it does not mean they are selling ‘new’ stock.

  most all, with exception of equipment suppliers, will have a code of sum type, letters and/or numbers, or actual date of when ‘shelf life’ expires.

  also, if you have a ‘batteries plus’ store in your area, you may well be better off buying from them, as the cr2032 is a commonly used cell and would have a high turn over. and you would save on shipping costs.

  in freezing, chemical reaction within cells is reduced, inverse of what high temps due.

  changing a cell with power on is safe because there is usually a diode, some include a low ohm resistor, in series with cell to block voltage supplied by ps on. with such, there is no load on cell and no possible ‘current shock’ from arching when cell is removed.

  should/may not be a problem, but…

  as with all electronics that have polarized electrolytic capacitors, these capacitors need ‘forming’ when they have been with out power for extended periods. the ‘dry out’ period various drastically and is more critical with high farad/high voltage types. less critical in current day digital circuits. tho this may not hold totally true with power supplies that have powered down for very long periods.

  forming is usually done by bring voltage up slowly and at a time period on tens of minutes before reaching full state.

  if you are storing for periods of months, verses years, there should not be anything to worry about.

  if you actually wanted to stay on a ‘safe side’ and have a variac, aka, variable transformer, you could hook one up, start at zero and step increase to 100% over a 10 to 20 minute period. then remove power for a short period and repeat process.

  not having a variac, a 25 to 50 watt incandescent lamp in series can work.

  adverse effect of not forming is that charge builds too quickly and capacitor insulation ruptures and a short forms.

  if you are real curious about forming and want to see just what is going on, connect a current meter in series with an ‘out of circuit’ capacitor (of large farad) and a volt meter across capacitor. follow above voltage stepping. each time you repeat process, you will see a faster current swing and larger ‘top voltage’ until you reach a point where ‘top voltage’ is reached quickly each time power is applied.

  switching frequency of memory chips is what is important. this can be found by searching the chip part numbers.

  no.

  this has gotten way ‘off topic’. if you have an more interest about forming capacitors, contact me “off list”.