Computer boots slow = bad battery?

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Betty

It's slow before the splash screen.

It shows a Dell logo then goes black for 3-5 minutes... shows a blinking cursor for about 30 seconds on a blue screen.

It used to boot up lickety-split in less then a minute- and now takes 5+ minutes. Nothing has been installed or done. This is a computer that runs a cnc in the factory and that's all it does. ever. nothing ever changes on it.

Best guess:

It's a CMOS issue. The boot process is looking for something that is no longer present (like a CD-ROM drive or floppy). It's waiting for it to timeout.

How comfortable are you in poking around the boot (CMOS) menu?