CMOS Utility appearing on every start-up? Help for a first timer

Hi there, I've been browsing MajorGeeks for some time but I'm a first time poster with a problem! I hope I've come to the correct forum, apologies for my noobness.

I recently purchased a refurb'd computer for my mum, its got a 1tb hard drive, 2gb of I'm not sure what RAM and what looks to be a fairly old motherboard, unfortunately I can't tell you the make of this either. Its worked fine for the first month since we bought it, then two weeks ago the time and date started to reset itself on every start up. Now, over this last week on every start up it takes you straight to the CMOS Utility screen, which I can exit out of and the computer starts up as normal, but with the time and date reset again. It then runs fine until you shut it down, no problems.

Maybe this is a pretty simple answer, and I'm overlooking something obvious, but i would much rather feel like a fool than have to keep visiting my computer-illiterate mother every evening to continually press "escape" for her at the start up screen. :banghead (she's a lovely woman in small doses)

Can someone shed some light on this for me please?

Thanks

 

replace the cmos battery on the motherboard, yet?
power off the PC & unplug, hit the power button then open the case and you'll see a dime sized battery (my be a CR2032) in a clip, release it.
Replace it and put the PC back together and set the CMOS back up.. see if that does it.

 

Well I assume the battery would be fine seeing as we bought it just over a month ago, but I haven't tried this yet no. Is it likely to be the main cause?

 

Just talked to my SO about the battery possibly being the cause, and apparently he has lots of spares so I will get back to you in a few hours after I've replaced it

 

It's the CMOS battery not holding a charge for sure. The symptoms match.