laptop troubles

Hi,
Im trying to fix a laptop for a friend. When i cold boot the laptop, it asks me for the BIOS disk so that it can flash the bios , after it has done this it will load windows 98, reset the laptop and its still ok, however if i power off then on again i must reflash the BIOS to get going again, does anyone has any ideas?

The laptop is a Thoshiba Satllie 2540CDS

UPDATE:
okay, heres what i did:
opened up the laptop, found 2 small nickel metal hydride batteries(rechargeable i think?), one half the size of the other. Deciding i couldnt do anything there i re assambled the laptop. Turned it on and for some reason it worked. i loaded the system, restarted it, cold booted it, and it seemed fine, so i left it on for about half an hour, then powered off, then on and the problem returned. i am at a loss to explain this.

Bad batteries????

sounds like ypu have a stuck key. I believe the f12 key is what you normally hold down when you boot the machine and want to flash the bios. check to see if anything has been spikked on the keyboard.

Has anyone ever flasheed the BIOS on this laptop before?

Aside from bad batteries, you may be dealing with a botched BIOS upgrade that may have damaged your onboard chip.