Bad CMOS Battery may cause unusual Windows problem

The units are Pentium III and a Pentium IV, both units has drained CMOS battery. The problem I encountered is that Windows XP hangs up at start up if you just bypass the CMOS bad error by pressing F1 upon turned on.

It took me sometime to figure out what is the problem, I even mistaken it as a software problem, but later I discovered this thing happen if you bypass CMOS setup at startup without particularly setting up the date, I don’t really know exactly what cause it, maybe BIOS has problem interacting with Windows if date is not properly set.

I just love my work, it's full of surprises!