CompTIA A+ 220-1101 (V14) Practice Question

The symptoms described suggest an issue that may relate to the computer maintaining its settings and proper functionality. A system's clock is powered by a small battery on the motherboard—the CMOS battery. If this battery fails, it can lead to the loss of BIOS/UEFI settings, including the system clock, and can cause boot issues and unexpected reboots. While corrupt operating system files could potentially cause reboots, they would not affect the system clock. Similarly, CPU overheating could result in reboots, but not in clock resets, which is a sign of a CMOS battery issue. Insufficient PSU wattage would lead to power failures or reboots during high energy demand, but does not explain the clock resets. Incorrect RAM type or improperly seated GPU would generally cause continuous instability or failure to boot, rather than intermittent reboots and system clock resets.