CPU clock & calendar question.

My CPU keeps correct time when I go away on vacation and shut it down for days. When I come home & start it up, the time and date are always correct (except for losing/gaining a few seconds per day/week).

A friend that I help fairly often has a system whose clock stops when it is turned off. If she leaves it off for a few days, both the clock and calendar show the time & date when she last shut it down.

We both run Windows 98 on Pentium processors which are a year or two old. It must be her Motherboard.

Have any of you heard of a BIOS/Motherboard which stopped the clock when shut down?

Could the CMOS battery be disconnected? Might there be a Setup option controlling the clock?

Any ideas?

Sounds a lot like a battery problem, like it's either run out or there's a bad contact. I've never seen any BIOS options to change the clock in that way. Perhaps you could test the battery's voltage with a multimeter, and see if it's what it's meant to be.