If the CMOS clear/storage position is a normally closed jumper or it's on a 3 pin either/or, replace the jumper cap for another one and clean the pins it might not be making good contact.

I didn't think of that! I checked them but didn't clean them or replace the jumper, I will try it thanks

I had a Soyo board that wasn't saving the settings and it turned out that there was some hard to see corrosion on the battery holder's contacts. I discovered that by measuring he voltage on the battery holder's pins on the back of the motherboard.

Oh yeah, talking of looking at the back, I did have a battery holder with a basically dry pin once, it must have had the merest scrap of solder holding it connected, until the mechanical action of changing the battery broke it.

This is good! I don't have time at the moment to pull the board but I appreciate the help and will get to it hopefully soon. My Two little boys and projects have me tied down till this week but hopefully one of these suggestions fixes it. Oddly enough I have a slot 1 board with a similar issue but in that case the battery seems to be going dead prematurely losing the settings I don't use that board much so no big deal.

I had something similar on an old board of mine - after a battery swap the settings held for a while, then started drifting again. In the end it was the spring clip in the battery holder that had lost contact, with a little corrosion under it. Worth checking that the clip really presses hard against the battery, not only that the battery itself is new.