Do I press F1 or F2?

[jacobyte]

I returned to my PC to find it had turned itself off, so I pressed the power botton to switch it on again.

Upon reaching the boot menu part of startup, it stopped at the following error:

CMOS/GPNV Checksum Bad

Press F1 to run Setup
Press F2 to load default values and continue

Any ideas what this means?

And do I take to F1 pill or the F2 pill?

[Plotloss]

F2

F1 will just take you into the BIOS setup.

[Fidgits]

it depends whether you want to fiddle or not

[jacobyte]

Thanks Plot, much appreciated - I thought it had died.

The clock has reset itself - anything else I might need to straighten out, or indeed what the error means?

ETA - Fidgits, I wouldn't have a clue what to fiddle with (on the computer at least )

Edited by jacobyte on Monday 20th August 20:30

[jimmyjimjim]

It means that for some reason, it's forgotten momentarily that it's a pc.
Could be for a number of reasons, the most likely (98%+)of which is the CMOS battery being a bit low and not able to keep the BIOS chip powered up, ergo loss of settings.
I've had this before on PC's, which have then been fine for a few months without any further intervention required before the battery gives up completely, I've also seen people too idle to do anything about it hitting F2 for months.
The first move would be to replace the battery, surprisingly enough.
It's usually a CR2025 watch battery; costs about £1.50 unless you buy from a jewellers in which case they'll charge you a fiver. About 30p each online if you buy 5 or more - if you've got a lot of weird things that take watch batteries (watches, perhaps? ) might be a chance to stock up.
Before you go and buy one, whip the side of the case off and look for the inch diameter shiny metal disk somewhere on the motherboard, and check the writing on it. It'll usually be somewhere in the bottom right of the board, but is pretty obvious.
Power off before replacing it, and be prepared to play about reloading the setup defaults and what not once it's done.