Rob,

From your description it is almost sure to be a CMOS battery.
According to the manual, the CMOS button type battery is under the keyboard,
which must be removed to get to it.  I would take a look in your manual (it
was on page 61 and 62 of this one) to see how to do it.  It cautions that
the keyboard and it's cable connector are fragile and care should be taken.

If you don't have the manual, I found it here:
ftp://ftp.pc.ibm.com/pub/pccbbs/mobiles/02r2913.pdf

Fred Nielson

-----Original Message-----
From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Rob Cilia
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 10:57 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] problems during laptop bootup process

IBM ThinkPad R30 laptop
Recently this laptop starting experiencing problems during bootup.  Instead
of launching win2k after the power-on password it goes into bios setup
screen, the date shown is not the current date
all of the settings are messed with such as boot up sequence, power saver
modes, cpu startup speed, cdrom speed modes, numlock/caplock settings, etc.
I can run win2k for a day or days on end without powering off with no
problems, but if I power off the unit and reboot it 2 or 3 times, the bios
setup screen rears it's ugly head and all the settings are messed with
again.

                  Visit our website regularly for FAQs,
               articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more
                          http://freepctech.com