I have an Asus G71gx (purchased at Best Buy). I purchased it a few years ago. It is now as it was when I purchased it. I have not opened the case, added, nor removed any hardware. I have updated drivers, and recently reformatted, about a month ago. All was running fine after the reinstall of everything for 20+ days before this problem started. The only thing new software wise is a set of realtek drivers installed 4-5 days before this issue started.

When I press the power button, the computer starts up with an immediate black screen, with a flashing grey cursor in the top left corner. There is no post, no sound, nothing.

I have to power off, grab a paper clip & press the reset button on the bottom of the computer. I --think-- this is the CMOS reset? Once I power back on all is well until it goes into sleep mode, or I power off. Then, I have to hit the reset before I boot back into a working system again, or anything for that matter.

I even tried to go into the BIOS, check over everything, then restart. I still have to reset as above. I am not sure if this is standard behavior for a bad cmos battery, or not.

Again, the system is working great once it boots.

Any more information you need, I will do my best to provide. I do not know what motherboard this system runs, as I could not find it.

Thank you in advance.