Thanks for the reply Chuck,

To be honest I've not tried breadboarding the chip like you suggest. I'll try that tomorrow and see if it makes any difference. Are you suggesting that there is a flaw with the EasyPIC5 board or just the RTC2 board... If the latter, why does it seem to work with other examples that write once to the module and then read the time back from that point... IMO it seems as if the code is doing strange things. I noticed that if I press the increment button it doesn't decrease by one unit, it seems to jump. Maybe the value on the LCD isn't the actual value that the counter is. EG, the hour displayed on the LCD hasn't refreshed to show the value the code has been set to by the button..