OK this is my computer... Cyrix MII-300, Amptron 9600 motherboard,American Megatrends Bios, 16MB ram, 1 Gig Hard drive, windows 98, ATI Xpert98 4mb Video card, 16bit sound card and a motorola 56k modem... this is my problem, I left my computer on one night, came back to it in the morning and found that it had froze, so i restarted the computer and got this error.."CMOS checksum bad" hit F1 to enter setup So i hit F1 enter the setup and find that my date is back to 1998 and my harddrives are set on auto. I changed both of them back and reset all the defaults in the bios(just incase). After this it still didn't work, I knew the powersupply was old so i thought it might have been the problem, i replaced it and still nothing, and i have also replaced the battery 2 times, the orignal battery was a K T S CR-2032. Toshiba cr-2032 was the first one I used to replace it and now i put in an Energizer 2032 again the same darn problem. please help!

If it fails right away with a new battery I would say that the cmos chip is probably flaky.

can this be fixed easy?

Assuming the chip is bad! It will probably take a technician to replace the chip if it's socketed. If not it might mean a new motherboard.

You get a respectable hardware & software combination, if only more rams. Problem may be there? I don't know.

Try a bios upgrade

Here is some info: This reference is from: http://www.pcguide.com/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/search-c.html CMOS checksum errors Explanation: A checksum is computed as an error-detecting code, to protect the BIOS settings stored in the CMOS memory. Each time the system is booted this number is recomputed and checked against the stored value. If they do not match, an error message is generated to tell you that the CMOS memory contents may have been corrupted and therefore some settings may be wrong. BIOSes react in different ways to encountering this sort of error. Some will warn the user and then continue on with whatever settings were in the CMOS. Others will assume that the settings that were in the CMOS were corrupted and will load default values stored in the BIOS chip "for safety reasons". The error message will indicate which your system is doing. Diagnosis: The most common cause of checksum errors in CMOS is a battery that is losing power. Viruses can also affect CMOS settings, and motherboard problems can also affect the stored values. Recommendation: Follow the instructions in this section to address the CMOS corruption. You should make sure that all of the BIOS settings in the system are correct, by rebooting the system, going into BIOS setup and double-checking all the values (hopefully against a recent BIOS settings backup). The BIOS settings in the CMOS memory have become corrupted or damaged Explanation: The data stored in CMOS memory that controls the BIOS settings has become corrupted. This is usually seen in a warning or error message when the PC is booted, since the CMOS has a checksum value that is used to allow the BIOS to detect when the settings have become corrupted. Diagnosis: The most common cause of this problem is the CMOS battery, which can cause erratic behavior if it is poorly connected or weak. It is also possible for other hardware or software problems to corrupt the CMOS memory, but this is unusual. Recommendation: If you have created a backup copy of your CMOS settings then use them to restore the settings to the correct values. To find the problem itself: · Troubleshoot the battery to make sure that it is not causing the problem. · Make sure that you scan the system for viruses. Viruses can corrupt the CMOS memory (although they cannot reside in it). · Troubleshoot the motherboard. Motherboard problems can sometimes (rarely) result in CMOS corruption. · Troubleshoot your power supply. A failing supply can lead to problems with the whole system, and especially motherboard components. Siri