hello. im having a problem when starting up windows 98se. the laptop will start up and at the windows startup screen it beeps and goes into the bios. a green and white screen appears saying error 00173 and 00163 when i click the ok button it brings me on to the clock. but the thing is when i set the clock in the bios to the correct time it loads up windows perfectly.the thing is when i turn off the laptop and leave it off for about an hour it starts up as a bios error again i was wondering if the bios battery is on its way out or if the bios needs updating. it does not seem to be able to hold the time set when i set it. any idea's hank

Replace the battery. Its the battery that keeps the clock ticking over amongst other things when the computer is turned off. Stuart

thanks stuarts for the quick responce. i have a laptop that is a lot older than this one. which is dell pentium 1 -133mhz belive it or not. and that bios battery has never been upgraded and still works fine.is there anything else that you can think of that could be causing this problem other than what you have mentioned thanks hank...

Hank, I'd agree with Stuart on this on, definitely sounds like you need to replace the battery, ever done it before?

thanks pyrokinetic666 yes i had to do it once on the p1-133mhz to restore com ports for dial up and ethernet broadband that was just taking out the bios jumper lead and reconecting the bios jumper lead after 2 minutes. the ibm thinkpad 600E is a strange bios setup than the one im used to is there a reset button like in other operating systems, f5 or somthing like that. i want to try everything just to make sure before i by a bios battery. thanks for your help...