CMOS Battery Low

Hi all, I have built an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ system with a barton processor and a K7S5A mainboard for a friend of mine. It was running fine 2 weeks ago and now it won't reboot. I've cleared the cmos and can get into the bios to reset the default settings but once I save and exit it won't reboot. It tells me after I've cleared my cmos that my cmos battery is low and my CMOS memory size is wrong. I have 2 options F1 to run setup and F2 to load default values and continue. When I hit F2 it won't do anything. I can F1 but I can't see anything wrong. Can anyone help me please? Thanks for your help. If you need more info let me know.

What happens if you hit F2? If it says the CMOS battery is low, I'd try replacing it to start.

Hi Dave, thanks for replying, I tried the F2 button but the key doesn't work when it boots up after clearing the CMOS. All I can do is use the F1 key. I can get into the Bios once I've cleared the CMOS. I've also been able to boot to a floppy but not my harddrive. From what I've learned in the past few days is that some of these K7S5A mother boards get these errors and there is no fix with some but there is with others. I've tried a different jumper, that didn't work. I tried disabling quickboot on startup and setting my IDE to Auto also. Still nothing. I'm stuck on what to do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks !

Coolcanuck

(^^;?(Karsh was saying that you shoud change Cmos Battery?)

If Cmos battery is low or out, it can't save settings. Change this Litium Battery.

If it fails, you cannot but to update the bios. Or rather you'd better complain of it to the vendor.