Because my date/time reset  would not set I was told by Dell to replace the CMOS battery. Lot of work and the date/time reset problem remained. Next was recommended that I do a BIOS upgrade. The A04 to A15 upgrade has been accomplished successfully and the date/time reset problem remaines.  I'm now being told again that this is definitely a CMOS battery problem. I don't think so--I metered the old battery upon removal and the voltage was right on ( 7.7v ) with lots of ma-hrs left. It makes no sense for me to go in and install a third battery untill I clear up some questions about why I don't automatically get the Save Changes Y/N option on escaping from the date/time reset?  I get it when I make changes to any of the other BIOS parameters, ( e.g.-- Minimal to Thorough hardware search change ) and these changes are in effect after a power off-on. What I get when I escape setup after a date/time reset is the message "date/time not set"   and the machine boots up W2k with it's clock running the correct date/time. If I do a reboot (restart) the W2k boots up correctly, but If I do a power off/on(shutdwn)

the "date/time not set" message appears and in setup I can see that the CMOS clock was never reset because it transfers 00.00.00 tues june 13 2003 as the date/time for the clock in setup to start up at. Because of all this I am convinced that its not a faulty CMOS battery since what part can the CMOS battery play in my not getting the Save Changes Option in setup escape-- after all I do get the save option for any other BIOS change. Because of these conditions I have the following questions regarding the Inspiron 8100 CMOS chip:

 

1: Is the CMOS Clock the only volitile information which needs the battery or are the other BIOS parameters also volitile? Note that if the others are volitile I can't have a bad battery since they would be lost on a pwrdwn-up---and they are not!

 

2: Now here is the tough one----On setup escape does the setup routine query the CMOS to see if everything is OK before giving the Save Changes option?  When I do a date/time in conjunction with other parameter changes the Save Changes option does come up but only the none date/time parameters are reset.

 

So as far as I can tell the only condition that allows the bad cmos battery conclusion is: The CMOS Clock is the only volitile(needs battery) BIOS info and on setup escape the setup routine

querys the CMOS!

I'm starting to think that the CMOS chip itself is the problem.