Virus causing CMOS problem??

Cookeh · 2 Mar 2010 at 18:32

Hey,
Came home and turned my PC on to be confronted with a message about the CMOS - however, it wasnt on for very long before I pressed F1 to enter BIOS to try and find an error.
There was nothing odd about it, everything was as it should have been, so I exited bios and it booted normally.
Whilst going onto two sites I go on regularly, this being on and yahoomail the other, I got security issue warnings with both sites, despite it being fine on the other PC's in the house.
Wondering if a virus could have caused this problem and the CMOS problem, if not could you guys suggest other things that may have?
Other "symptom" HDD is much louder and clicks :confused:

Sorry for the lengthy paragraph :eek:

Thanks,
Cookeh

Cookeh · 2 Mar 2010 at 22:10

This PC is rather old, cant quite remember age, as its been upgraded through the years.
base spec is as follows:
Skt478 Intel P4 (Northwood) @ stock (3.2Ghz)
ASUS P4C 800E-Deluxe
2gb unbranded PC-3200 DDR Ram
460W CM PSU

Cookeh · 3 Mar 2010 at 20:40

Okay, update:

Ran MalwareByte and had 4 corrupt/infected folders and 3 corrupt/infected files, those are now fixed according to MalwareByte.
Still getting the CMOS errors every single boot.
Any ideas?

Cookeh · 3 Mar 2010 at 22:14

EsaT said:
How about what that error message says exactly?

Simply says:
CMOS Error
and something about time and date.

Ill take a closer look next time I boot, and maybe take a picture xD

Cookeh · 4 Mar 2010 at 17:58

The message simply states:

CMOS Settings Wrong
CMOS Date/Time Not Set
Press F1 to Run SETUP
Press F2 to load default values and continue

The latter is the option I always choose, and yes, the clock and date are always miles out. February 2000, 00:10:00 is what it displays :confused:

Cookeh · 4 Mar 2010 at 18:23

thingemajib said:
like i say, you can synchronise upon each boot, and this will solve your certificate problem, but it sounds to me like a dead battery.
if you dont have a spare to hand, just find ANY motherboard whether in use or not and swap the battery out to test. It should still come up with the error the first time, but if it goes away upon subsequent boots, then it may be something else. All motherboards always have and probably always will use excactly the same battery.

edit: stupid question, but have you tried pressing f1, and changing something really minor in the bios and saving it? (ie, change the fsb from 200 to 201mhz). does it keep resetting each time after that?

Yeah, upping the FSB or touching anything related to overclocking causes a bluescreen :mad:

And dont have a spare to hand, short of cannibalising my sisters pc, and neither parents nor sister will be happy with that