[Hampshire] [OT] ? CPU problem?

The last three times I have booted I have had the following error message:
<quote>
CPU is unworkable or has been changed

Press F1 to continue.
</quote>

I have stopped closing down over-night in case the next boot should actually
fail. (I had the problem, rebooted without pressing F1 to see if it happened
again and Lenny loaded without a problem. And I shutdown overnight again
because I forgot not to do so.

But I have since left it running. Which it seems to do quite happily.

Nothing has changed. And the CPU is obviously not totally unworkable.

I Googled and most of what I found simply did not apply, but I found one which
did apply and said:

<quote> it maybe that the small battery on your motherboard is coming to the
end of its life, and its forgotton some of the settings. You can easily
replace this.</quote>

So - is this good advice?

TIA
Lisi