Date and time failure in Dell inspiron 1525

Hello,
The date and time on my Dell 1525 "reset" to some random date and time every couple of weeks. I can tell it has happened because there is a problem in the set up or in opening some programs. Other programs will prompt me for critical updates. I can get into the date and time set up, change them back to current date and everything will be fine for a few days or weeks. I have thought about changing the battery but after reading this column it appears that the battery has nothing to do with the problem. This machine is barely a year old, btw.