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I have a strange problem. We are required to remove the hard drives from a computer when we shut down our system. When we come back, we power up the system, and the computer automatically tries to power on, even before the hard drives are reinstalled (it doesn't wait for someone to press the "power" button). This is a logistics issue we can't work around: we can't simply put the hard drives in before we power up the system.

I think what is happening is that since the computer is powering up without the hard drive, the bios must be removing the hard drive from the boot list completely, and defaulting to some kind of shell console type boot. Then, when I power down the computer and plug in the hard drive, it definitely gets added back into the boot list, but in the wrong order.

So I am having to manually reset the boot list every day.

Is there a solution to this?

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  • When you say “we power up the system, and the computer automatically tries to power on” how does “the system” differ from “the computer” powering on? Are these two separate computing devices, or are we talking about a powering on a seemingly non-computing device like the office lights and seeing the computer POST and show BOIS options? An interdependency level somewhere in between? Is “the computer” a traditional office desktop tower, a laptop, something more specialized?
    – newcoder
    Commented May 27, 2020 at 6:05
  • Yes, lights and other non-computing devices are "system" power. Ideally we turn on the system and then later we could go in and turn on the desktops, after we have installed the hard drives. They are a somewhat custom desktop tower, in that its ruggedized. I have contacted the manufacturer to see if there's a solution, but I wasn't sure if there was some generic setting or settings that are common to all bios.
    – Sittin Hawk
    Commented May 28, 2020 at 13:00

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The common name for the setting that causes some desktops to attempt to boot automatically when power is introduced to the system is “Restore on AC/Power loss.” My experience with it is entirely from the legacy BIOS (non-UEFI) epoch; it seemed to be most commonly enabled by default on motherboards from the windows 95 / 98 / XP era.

On commodity devices a certain F-key (displayed onscreen) would save current BIOS settings and boot, while another F-key boots these settings without saving for next time.

Company- and school-issued laptops in my experience usually have a BIOS password preventing unauthorized users from committing BIOS settings to memory for the next boot.

I suspect that an organization requiring the hard drive to leave with the user has (hopefully) introduced this or similar security measures. Maybe more than one measure, such as removing the CMOS battery.

Traditionally, the boot order and other BOIS settings in memory are maintained by the CMOS battery while power is disconnected (provided changes are written to memory). If there is no CMOS battery or if it’s dead, even if you solve the wake on power challenge and/or the save BIOS settings hotkey/password, it will do the same default behavior next time.

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