[nzlug] Oops, my clock

[cr]

Just noticed my system clock is way wrong (so my last reply about sound will 
be way off time).

Last week I was having great trouble booting - CPU fan would start up, but my 
monitor would just show an orange pilot light for several minutes (indicating 
I think no video signal) before it would finally go green.   I suspected 
maybe one of my four hard drives (plus a CD + DVD) was not starting, since 
often unplugging one or more would apparently allow things to start (after 
which, switching off, replugging all drives, and restarting worked fine).   
So I replaced my 400W power supply with a twice-the-price 500W one - no 
change.   Cautiously tried tweaking any possibly relevant settings in the 
BIOS - no improvement.   And besides that, the system clock kept losing time 
(least of my worries).   

So a couple of days ago I checked the CMOS battery (in a 2-month-old 
motherboard!) and found it had 2.92V.    Bought a new battery (which read 
3.2V) and installed it, and bingo - boot-up is now instant.   I doubt whether 
the low battery was the reason for the reluctance to boot, more likely 
ripping it out caused some screwed-up BIOS setting to revert to defaults.   I 
don't think I had done anything to the BIOS (certainly not intentionally) but 
maybe it got confused with all my recent shuffling of hard drives and a reset 
was needed.   

Anyway, I forgot to set the system time when I installed the new battery.   
It's set now.   Apologies to those for whom it matters that my last reply was 
off-time.

cr