I'm having a problem (I think kernel related) booting my system:

When I try to boot into my system I get an error when mounting my root partition that the last write and mount times are in the future. I am prompted to run fsck manually and date gives me a time 3 hours in the past... I think this might be a cpu frequency scaling issue or something but I'm not sure and I haven't come across any possibilities yet. Running fsck and setting the mount and write times back 3 hours allows me to boot but this is obviously not a nice solution. This only happens if the machine is rebooted within 3 hours of the last boot of course.

Some statistics:

Debian Etch
Dell Inspiron 600m
Kernel 2.6.12
Root partition is ex3

This probably just means your clock/timezone is set wrong. Nothing more sinister than that. Lot's of info on how to manage this on the web. I just went to Google and searched variations of these words: "linux date clock time wrong incorrect". Came up with the following hits (amongst many others):

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Clock.html

http://www.linuxsa.org.au/tips/time.html

http://www.linux.com/guides/sag/x2804.shtml

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/TimePrecision-HOWTO/

On your system, also run "man date" and "man hwclock" for additional info.

I know this seems like a lame answer but if you shut down the computer over night the problem will be gone.

I can't see any problems with my clock settings, they are on the correct time and timezone. However, before the system clock is set to the hardware clock's time during boot is when I get this error.

When I had this problem it was because of one thing.
My computer needed a new battery (CR2032). Once it was replaced I had to run fsck once again and all has been well since.

Would there be any lag in the hardware clock if the battery were dying? I haven't been paying too close attention to it but every time I check either with hwclock or in bios before booting it looks correct.