my husbands computer decided last nite to throw an error, it threw a blue screen with the words dumping physical memory..last time that happened a new hard drive was required.However got the computer to boot up and it found new hard ware. master-storage comtroller, my husband went onto windows update and to his horror found out that the computer and set its self back to january 1st 2003, windows update spotted this error and when we had put date/time correct it let him download what he needed. then for some unknown reason the raid utility in the bios activated its self causing an extra window in boot up .. l took the pc back to shop where l had brought it as my husband and l are not any good with computers..bearing in mind the pc was brought new in august 2003 and stil under guarrantee, they said nothing wrong with the pc. lm just interested if anyone knows the cause of what happened to the pc as the shop techs didnt say anything . the system is amd xp 3000+ 120bg 7200 sata 512 mb 128mb radeon 9200 and other bits like cd drives/fire wire the computer was idle on the net at the time and the server stopped working and the task manager was brought up to end the task then the computer went pop sorry this was so long thanks

CMOS Battery is bad replace it.

Reading on, with the "pop" noise you may have burnt the CMOS chip, did you smell anything burning afterwords? If not I would say the CMOS battery is out.

thanks for the replies the term "pop" is for when the computer broke down sorry for my terminology there...the pc is only 5 months old .. was built for my husband it went back into the shop for a new hard drive .. would the cmos battery cause the computer to error ? or is that a totally different thing?

The CMOS Battery is what keeps the BIOS settings "current" or to what you set them too, It also keeps the time and date current when the computer is off. It is does not normally go out in 5 months usually 3-5 years. Mine has been in my current PC for 2 years now. A hard drive crash may change some of the settings but time and date are usually controlled by the CMOS and can be change in the BIOS as well as in Windows.

Are you using another time/date update program? If yes then deactivate the windows time/date updater. I would suggest you check the built in time/date updater. Set it for the windows site. The other is allways having problems. As was stated the cmos batteries will last several years. Any where from 5 to 7 years. As a absolute last resort either reset the bios using the jumper or from inside the bios load the default bios values.