Battery Dying????

[saggy]

Lately my computer has decided to start playing up on me! Now, there is no easy way to explain this but I'll try...
Every now and then the computer 'sticks' for some seconds (this varies). At that point, I can't move mouse or do anything for that fact and when I'm playing music from the pc in the background it's sounds more like a broken record than anything else!!
On top of that, I have noticed recently that the clock in Windows 98 has been falling behind about 10 minutes a day!!
Is it the battery on the motherboard that needs to be replaced?? And if so is it possible that it is interfering with my pc's performance or should I be looking elsewhere for the problem??
I have spoken to the vendors of my hard disk and they told me to download a diagnostic tool which I have and it says that there's nothing wrong with the hard disk...so I'm confused!!!
Any help greatly appreciated!!
Thanx

Saggy

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Now..if the green goes to the blue
& the brown goes to the red
where does the yellow go???
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[Slasher]

Saggy your symptoms are exactley the same as I get now and then. You must have a stinking bloody idiotic Lithion Smart Battery the same as I have.
What it happened I dragged the cursor down to the battery icon in the taskbar tray (took all bloody day to get there!) where it showed 0% charging. This of course is bullsh!t as a battery cant go from 100% to 0% in 1 second. It might be because of the stupid so-called Smart Battery and its Windows interface and the battery reports b*llsh!t to W98 resulting for some reason in the computer slowing down. Refreshing the battery didnt help either.
Cure? The only I know of through experience is just turn the computer off. Remove the battery and put it back again ensureing its fully secure. Leave the computer off for a while. Reboot. Check battery status. If its 100% charging you should be ok but dont physicaly push and shove the computer itself around. Keep an eye on your computer battery light (if you have one). If it flickers check the battery icon again.
Id be interested if someone else has a better cure.

[spannersatcx]

The battery on the motherboard keeps all your BIOS settings and real time clock going etc, wouldn't hurt to replace it if it is the watch type should be fairly easy. I wouldn't expect that to be cusing your PC to be locking up, it sounds like you are multi tasking and could be getting low on resources. It may be worth putting the resource meter on your desktop to see if this is happening, although this uses resources in itself. The other thing to do is make sure you have the latest graphics drivers installed, latest BIOS update etc etc.
I presume you are talking desktop and not laptop? Make sure all power saving is off in the BIOS and Windows, this causes no end of problems, more trouble than it's worth. It could bew that you are not using your HDD and it is powering down and causing the lock up, so make sure ALL power saving functions are off. Regularly defrag HDD. Is Windows managing your swop file, is there sufficient space on the drive/partition for the swop drive. Check for any conflicts in device manager.

[blackadder]

If you are talking laptops, see if you can borrow another battery to test it, or take it to a dealer and see if they will let you test it.
Slash,

did you eventually get the IBM laptop?

[saggy]

Yes it is a desktop we are talking about and not a laptop!!...and I don't have much going at the same time!! It even happens when I turn on the computer and just open Microsoft Outlook!
And it started happening the past month an a half..haven't installed anything to cause this, device manager seems to be happy, defraged in case, still the same problems!
Why??

saggy

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ok...I'm going to start crying now!!!!
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[spannersatcx]

Click start>run then type msconfig check diagnostic startup or selective startup, put a tick in everything, if ok then start unticking each item until you isolate which item is causing the lock up.