Need help with error messages at startup of RedHat Linux (with GNOME)

I haven't made much use of my laptop in the past couple years
because the modem stopped working back then (and the diskette drive
never worked since I got the laptop as a gift), so there has been
no way to upload/download files any longer, so it seemed a waste to
do a lot of work developing software which I couldn't even copy to
another place for backup or demo much less actual use elsewhere.

But today I got the idea that maybe I could use a USB thingy or an
external multi-gigabyte hard drive to move files back and forth, so
for the first time in months I plugged it in for a couple minutes
to start charging the battery, then pressed the start-up
side-button. The display of Phoenix ROM BIOS version and copyright
notice, MagicGraph SVGA BIOS version and copyright notice, Dell
Latitude XPi version, and memory size, went OK (and I actually had
time to see that all for the first time ever because it's still
sitting on the screen, because of what happened next:), but then I
got three error messages, only the third of which I expected:
Invalid configuration information - please run SETUP program
Time-of-day not set - please run SETUP program
Warning! Battery is critically low.

So next it asks me to make a choice:
Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility
I've never run the setup utility (or program), so I wouldn't know
what to type in to it. What if I type something wrong and I totally
destroy the system on my computer? Before I go on (press F2), I'd
like advice about what to say to the SETUP program/utility when
it's running.

By the way, the keyboard has a blue label on F1 (not F2) which says Setup.
This adds to my confusion here.
In any case, are there any GOTCHAs that I should especially watch out for?

Note, before posting I tried a Google search for the phrase
Invalid configuration information
but the only article that came even close was specific to PacBell
386 machines where pressing F1 or F2 doesn't do anything at all.
(I haven't pressed either key yet, waiting for
advice/warnings/GOTCHAs before starting down that road...
so I don't know whether pressing F2 will run the setup utility/program or not)

I was going to post to a couple more specific newsgroups,
but they don't seem active lately:
linux.dev.config (last post 2007.Apr)
linux.dev.newbies (last post 2003)
.

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