I'm back visiting home for a few days, and I have an old laptop here (very old, it's a PII IBM ThinkPad 600E, but it does the job for e-mail and web browsing) Anyway I only left 5 weeks ago, but when I came back to use my laptop, it comes up with errors 00161 and 00163 - I've done some research and apparently this indicates a dead battery and no date/time set. But I only replace the CMOS battery about 2 months ago! Also it comes up with a password prompt, but I'm assuming the password is nothing because when I press enter it comes up with "OK" in a circle, but then goes into the BIOS Setup with a screen saying "ERROR" in big letters, with the aforementioned error codes then listed and 2 buttons, "OK" and "Cancel" However, pressing either button causes the same outcome - the screen still reads "ERROR" but then has the error codes 161 and 163 listed, with an arror pointing to a book - very informative! The machine is then locked. What on earth could be the problem here? Cheers

PS - I've also tried removing the CMOS battery and reconnecting, with no change

This might be worth a try: "You need to set the time and date, and you should be sent directly into the BIOS for that. You will then need to not only re-boot, but to turn the machine all the way off. When it comes back up, all is well."

Thanks for the reply, Thing is, nothing about dates and times comes up - the Error screen comes up and after that nothing happens, so I'm stumped.

Doesn't the bios let you set the date/time? What happens when you try?

Nothing because I can't get into it - I press F1 when booting (holding F1 as I power up) and the same thing happens - it goes to the screen with the big "ERROR" message, but rather than telling me what to do or what the problem is, it just has an "------>" symbol pointing to the picture of a manual, which isn't very helpful for a 2nd hand laptop :(

I don't know if a manual will help, but there are a bunch of Thinkpad 600 manuals here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/s...