My computer will lock up occassionally when gaming or just doing nothing special. When I reboot, it directs me to the BIOS, and every time the date and time are way off. I bought this computer new in 12/2002. I wonder if the date and time battery needs to be replaced. How can I tell? I have a pentium 4, running XP home.
My laptop also occasionally does this, does it always reset to the same date, same year, or is it always different? The same date probably means the battery is flat, as it is resetting to it's date when it was made (probably).
Yes, this is a common sign of a dead or dying CMOS battery. You will need to replace it with a CR2032 type watch battery
