TravelMate 330T

I have a vintage (circa 1999) TravelMate 330T that I am quite fond of, only use on infrequent (3-4 X yearly) trips, primarily to check email and eBay, and would like to get a couple more years use from (I replaced the battery last year, and upgraded to Win 98SE from the OEM Win 98 that it came with). On my last trip I experienced slow service with Netscape Mail. It could have been that Netscape was having a problem (this was in early August 2007, up in Washington state), but in any event I tried to defrag the HD--it won't defrag. The routine appears to be running, but it doesn't go anywhere. I've run all the PC Doctor routines, as well as SCANDISK and Surface Scan, and everything seems to be fine. Now a new problem has come up (just two weeks ago, as I was checking the system for my next trip, which is 11/28/07). When I boot up, I get a "CMOS Battery Bad" notice. The system will still boot, and I've checked all the BIOS settings and everything seems to be in order, with the exception of the Basic System Settings (i.e., Date and Time). That page is non-responsive (i.e., cursor won't move around page), and when I open it from the BIOS Utility, the whole system freezes up and I have to hard boot the system to get it running again. I tried calling Acer tech support, but they were less than helpful when they learned the unit was out of warranty. Basically, they said I could send it to Texas for a service; minimum charge $449. I can buy a brand new Dell notebook for that.

So, my questions are: (1) how do I replace the CMOS battery; and, (2) what can I do about the defrag problem?

 

I can't answer the cmos battery q but i do remember that the windows 98 defragger was terrible in regular mode, try running it in safe mode, that usually allowed it to complete.

 

CMOS battery should be very acsessible really.. Its under a compartment somwhere.. genrally under the keyboard.. But it wont be a problem with the battery that causes the laptop to go slow.. Its just the date and time . nothing more.

 

Eureka! Thank you, my friend. Defraging in Safe Mode was just what the doctor ordered.