Clock losing time

[Bryan3]

Hello,

I have an older computer running WIN98se. Lately my clock has been running slow. It takes a day or two but it loses about 15 minutes. I know what many of you are thinking. Battery!

But, here is the twist. Except for a daily restart, I never shut the computer down. I watch it at restarts and it doesn't occur at that time. Any ideas what needs tweeking?

Thanks

[Budfred]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

I would still say BATTERY. I would try to replace the battery and see if that makes the difference.

Good luck,
Budfred

[Whyzman]

Looks like Budfred beat me to the Forums welcome! ;) Welcome!

The "real time clock" is a hardware time piece that runs from the battery you referred to earlier.

The clock in the lower right is a software creation courtesy of Microsoft... Many things can interfere with it's timekeeping capabilities...Thus, when you reboot it resets from from information provided from the real time clock.

With your not rebooting very often you're not providing it the opportunity to reset....and if your battery is weak, even when you reboot it won't be able to give you the "real time!" ;)

[Paul Komski]

You can use Atomic TimeSync from AnalogX (http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/ats.htm) to periodically update the time for you. ;)

[Bryan3]

Thanks for the welcomes and thanks for the timely responses.

I didn't realize the battery is used by anything while the power is running.

Sounds like the best fix for my problem is to tell my wife the team of experts from The PC Guide said we gotta buy a new computer! ;)

[Budfred]

Just make sure she doesn't see what we actually wrote. A battery costs about $3 and a new system about $1000. I suspect she might not appreciate the difference.

Budfred:D

[trapper]

Originally posted by Bryan3
Hello,

I have an older computer running WIN98se. Lately my clock has been running slow. It takes a day or two but it loses about 15 minutes. I know what many of you are thinking. Battery!

But, here is the twist. Except for a daily restart, I never shut the computer down. I watch it at restarts and it doesn't occur at that time. Any ideas what needs tweeking?

Thanks

Hi Bryan3:
I am not an expert like the other guys. However, I have had the same problem with my clock in my HP PC in the past. On the different forums I went on, the usual response was to replace CMOS battery. Well I wasnt really sure how to go about that so I made further searchs and I got following response from HP web Support:

3 Options:
Option 1: Disable Advanced Power Management (APM)
Option 2: Remove and reinstall Realtime clock
Option 3: Replace the CMOS battery

I tried Option 1. and it didnt resolve the problem, but Option 2 did the trick. The first 2 Options are relatively simple and didnt involve getting out the screwdrivers and going into the case.

If you would like the instructions on this please post back and I'll post them.

trapper

[slim]

Hi,

I agree that the most likely cause of the clock losing time is the CMOS battery.

But somethig else that I found in the past which can affect the clock in windows is software running in the background taking alot of cpu time. The reason I memntion this is because I came across a similar problem and after replacing the CMOS battery the problem was still evident, but after some further investigation I found the cause to be Norton antivirus, but it was a old version of the software so it might not apply here but it just a idea.

Slilm

[Whyzman]

slim,

Indeed, that appears to be exactly the case. There are many software "glitches" that can affect the software clock we see on our desktop. Rebooting is the way this clock resets to the "quartz Real Time Clock" run by the CMOS battery.

Bryan3's problem appears to be a compound situation. Software interference is slowing his desktop clock, and when he does reboot (and not often as he stated) his CMOS real time clock is also lagging due to a weak battery and therefore resets behind the times. :)