Every time I turn on my mate's laptop it goes to Setup I type in my password and I save and exit .It restarts back into setup all the time. I have changed the Hard Drive as my mate said He had a virus on it and I have changed the boot order to boot from DVD Rom to re-install Windows. Any Ideas Thanks

It sounds like one the keys is stuck, maybe F1 or the delete key. Did he spill something on he keyboard?

Your description is muddy. It sounds like the cmos battery is too weak or dead. If your mate's laptop you are talking of is the one specified, it's an OLD model.... PCG-F807K Original specs... PIII 650 MHz - RAM 64 MB - HDD 12 GB I would guess it was made circa 2000. If it's never been changed, it's likely the cmos battery is too weak or dead. They usually last 5 years, but you can't count on them lasting much longer than that. If that's the case, the computer will go to the bios Setup after every time the computer has been shut down and then you try booting, you/he will probably get a "cmos checksum error" or similar message every time you boot after having shut down the computer and then you try booting, and at the very least the time and date will be reset to defaults. If the date and time are set to defaults when you boot after the computer has been shut down, the cmos battery is no good. An example cmos battery: http://www.dsmiller.com/html/Laptop... If you are prompted for a password - it can be a system password, or a bios accees password, or a hard drive access password, or two of those. The passwords for more recent laptops are not stored in the cmos on the bios chip - they're stored on another chip that cannot be erased by removing the power to it. Flashing the bios has no effect on the passwords in that case. I don't know if that applies to this OLD model or not. The User manual for the model will tell you/him whether passwords are erased when you remove the cmos battery, or if it's too weak or dead. If the system or bios access password is erased when the cmos battery is no good, you will not be prompted to provide one, unless the hard drive itself has an access password. If there is a password to access the hard drive, that's a different matter - if it has one, you will still have to provide it in any case, even if the cmos battery is no good. On more recent computers, if the hard drive has a password, the data regarding whether or not the drive has been "locked" is on the drive itself in an area inaccessable to the user - it can't be erased by wiping the drive. Whether you are prompted for a password or not, you have to set the time and date to other than defaults, otherwise the computer will go to the bios Setup everytime you boot. The bios will retain the settings when you reboot, but the time and date settings are lost when the computer is shut down. If the hard drive has Windows on it and is bootable, after you save settings, as long as you don't shut down the computer, it will boot into Windows after you do that, if the boot order settings are compatible. If the optical drive, floppy drive (this model probably came with one), and the hard drive can be all be listed at the same time in the boot order, the optical drive DOES NOT have to be listed first in order for you to be able to boot from a bootable CD, but it does have to be before the hard drive(s) in the boot order. If you can include all three in the boot order, if you list floppy drive first, optical drive second, hard drive third, for most people's uses (unless you boot from a network card - this computer can't boot from a USB connected drive) it will work for all booting situations, and you do not have to change it. In all the bioses I've tried it in, if you list the optical drive first, floppy drive second, the computer will not recognize a bootable floppy in the floppy drive when there is no bootable CD in the optical drive.