What can cause a loss of BIOS settings?

[eddie86]

I have not cleared the CMOS using the jumper, or removed the motherboard battery....

What else can cause all my BIOS settings, date/time, the lot to be reset?

 

[eddie86]

On an old system I would automatically think that it was the battery, but the motherboard is only a few months old.

I have had to do a fair few hard restarts recently (holding down power button to switch off) and it has happened twice after doing this. Can that cause the BIOS settings to be lost?