is my computer just dying?

i have been having a problem that seems to only be getting worse and worse lately and i was hoping maybe someone could offer some type of insight on to what may be the reason...
whenever i turn on my computer in the morning the fan for the cpu turns on along with the harddrive and the lights for both my cd drives blink but it doesnt boot up to windows.. i have to hit my reset button anywhere from 2-12 times before it will fianally start up.when it does start it does the post test ,detects my 2 cd drives,harddrive and then 8 out of 10 times it will give an error message "previous cpu setting incorect. cmos adjusted to default..press f1 to continue" the thing is i have never gone into my bios and messed with my speed for my processor at all so i dont understand why this is happening.i was told it might be my bios battery but i dont think that is the problem since my clock still keeps the time.i tryed reformatting but it didnt help .it has also gotten to the point where it wont even restart without needing to have reset hit.

i have a pentium 2 350 mhz processor,12 gig hd,320 mb pc100ram.award PnP bios v4.51pg

thank you in advance to anyone who can possibly help me even remotely with this annoying problem

i recomed that you check your bios settings, and see if ther match your processor, memory, shared memory, boot secuense etc.

Hmmz, my first tought was the battery as well... What exactly happens when it doesn't start up? Any messages? Are there any sounds? Does the monitor switch out of 'sleep'? Maybe the CMOS-chip itself is incorrect (did you flash it? If not - try that).

if you've been running your computer for a while and do a cold boot, do you still get the same message?
if not you might need to replace the cmos battery on the momboard. if its not holding a charge it cant hold your hardware settings.

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Hmmz, my first tought was the battery as well... What exactly happens when it doesn't start up? Any messages? Are there any sounds? Does the monitor switch out of 'sleep'? Maybe the CMOS-chip itself is incorrect (did you flash it? If not - try that).

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when it doesnt start ,nothing at all happens..it sits there quietly humming away..when it fianally boots the monitor comes out of sleep mode and it beeps once and loads like a normal computer should..

i dont know what you mean by"flashing" the chip...im sorry i still am relatively new.but the thing is it used to work at a point in the not so distant past so i dont know why the chip would become wrong... thanks for your very fast response as well :D

There's a way to update the BIOS software, sometimes that goes wrong - that's what I meant. Anyways, I still would try to change the battery - I can't explain the time not being reset (are you connected to a LAN that checks for time changes on logon?), but it's the only thing I can think of right now.

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if you've been running your computer for a while and do a cold boot, do you still get the same message?

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it will do the message both starting fresh in the morning or a restart like when you install a program,but like i said it doesnt always give that message...that is what is driving me so crazy.. it seems intermintent..is it possible that it might still be the battery even if it keeps the time and other settings i have made? thank you for your help

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is it possible that it might still be the battery even if it keeps the time and other settings i have made?

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Change it and find out :)

wow! i am getting responses faster than i can make replys to them!
guus-ok i didnt understand that is what you meant..i am not attached to a lan either.. i will have to look to see if i can find a bios update..thank you so much for all your help it is very much apreciated..

funny this thread is up because my compaq just about died( i'm using my dads dell right now)

I have system commander installed on it and the first thing i noticed was it wouldn't let me boot into Linux.

Now when i boot it says "Could not find operating system on any devices"

I checked the bios and it isn't even detecting my harddrive. It only detects my my DVD drive and CDROM drive. Even when i ask it to "detect devices and exit"

what is going on here? I probably should open it up to see if someone took out my linux hard drive first. BRB