I'll take a stab here.

The cmos is the memory that is stored in your computer and
is always on;  it runs on the little battery on your motherboard.  Its
purpose is to store the settings for your computer that are
specific to your hardware environment.  The date and time,
for example, or the settings of your hard drives, perhaps.

At bootup, the computer runs some kind of check to see
if the cmos is good, probably some kind of parity check.

Your computer reports that this check failed, indicating
that something is wrong with your cmos.

If you press <F1> at this point, you are taken into the
cmos programmer to make adjustments, and if
you press <F2> you are continued on to the
operating system.

As you saw, however, neither of these events occurred.  This
indicates that the problem is so severe that the computer is
unable to run properly.

In other words, your computer is broke bad.

You may be able to get some help on how to fix it easily,
but, most likely, you will have to replace the motherboard.
This is relatively easy to do (see the freepctech web site
for how-to information) unless the HP mb is proprietary.
Then you may need a new case, too.

If it were me, "Honey, the computer is broke!  Time to
upgrade to a Pentium 4!"   :)

Dean Kukral   [log in to unmask]

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Brooks" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2002 3:25 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] CSMO problem


> I have a HP computer with W98 that has been working.
> When I turn it on it shows the HP logo as usual & then a list of checks it
has made. The last lines printed on the screen are:
> ---------------------
> Mouse initialized
> ERROR
> 0251: sys CMOS checks bad - Default configuration used
>
> Press <F1> to set up    <F2> to resume
> --------------------
> If I press <F1> it reboots and repeats the process to this point.
> If I press <F2> it prints "operating system not found"
> If I put a boot disk in the floppy drive it just seems to try to read it
for a long time or will say "invalid disk" and pressing the power button
will not turn the computer off.
> Nothing I've tried seems to help and I don't understand enough about the
process to figure this problem out.
> Can someone help me?
>
> John Brooks [log in to unmask]
>
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