Every PC motherboard has a battery. That battery serves two purposes: to feed the configuration memory (also called CMOS) and to feed the real time clock of the computer (the one that show the date and the time).
An indication it is time to change the motherboard battery is receiving one of the following error messages when you turn on your computer: CMOS CHECKSUM FAILURE, CMOS BATTERY STATE LOW, CMOS SYSTEM OPTIONS NOT SET and CMOS TIME AND DATE NOT SET. Another indicator of a low battery is a clock that, after being set, runs well while the computer is on, but shows the wrong time when the computer is turned on the following day (it is late).
that explains the basic's quite well,usually the time etc is wrong after turning on (as i found today on 1 pc) some mobo's just give this gentle indication,others those warnings above. changing the battery is very easy,first you need to know what type it is/part number (usually something like "cr2032") you can even buy these in tesco's now : it looks like this
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/imageview.php?image=188 to change it turn the pc off at wall socket and leave for 10 mins or so (press the on button on pc to discharge the psu after power off) more instructions here
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/81 when you turn the pc back on your going to have to go into bios and reset date and time and reset any other settings you had done before, so if you have been tweaking it make your you have made a note of all your settings :wink:
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