What is the typical voltage of a WORKING CR2032 lithium battery.?
It’s rated at 3V, so your battery should be fine. The CR2032 is a 3V lithium-ion battery. You can pick up a spare one at most supermarkets for only about £3. Nevertheless, the CR2032 should have a 10% voltage tolerance. If it drops below 2.7V then you should consider replacing it (see PC Pitstop source reference below) but your battery should be fine and should not prevent your BIOS from being stored when the PC is off. It’s possibly that you have other problems on your motherboard related to the voltage regulation of the circuit or something – this might be alleviated with a fresh battery, but there’s no guarantee that a new one won’t start off at around 2.9V anyway. Because of the way Li-ion batteries work, they lose charge from the moment they’re manufactured, so if you leave them sitting around then they won’t be as useful. See the Li-ion article from Wikipedia below on Li-ion battery shelf life. For the sake of £3 I’d see if it sorts out the problem, but it might be a motherboard
