Windows clock losing time

Tofystedeth

One of my user's computer is having trouble keeping time lately. I would say it was the CMOS battery, but it happens while his computer is on. Over the course of the day he can watch as it gets more and more behind, at a rate of several minutes an hour. I watched him reset it today at about 10 and by 12 it was already 15 minutes behind. Anybody know what can be doing this?

focused7

Sounds like it's the battery. Quick way to test the battery is to go to the DOS shell and type TIME. If the time it gives is different then the windows time then the battery is going.

bowen

Yeah that definitely sounds like a battery issue. Or maybe some crazy, piss-you-off kind of virus.

Tofystedeth

Really? The battery can screw up the time even while the computer is powered on?

I did some googling and some people were saying things about if there's too many programs running at once, the Windows time thing doesn't do it's interrupts at the right time or something. But that seems kind of silly...

bowen

Tofystedeth wrote: »

Really? The battery can screw up the time even while the computer is powered on?

I did some googling and some people were saying things about if there's too many programs running at once, the Windows time thing doesn't do it's interrupts at the right time or something. But that seems kind of silly...

Yeah that does seem silly since it's not like the computer is going "1... 2... 3... ... ... ... 4... .... ... 4....", from what I've understood while I was sleeping in introduction to computer was that the CMOS clock just measures ticks from the UNIX epoch, and if the battery is drained/dying it can't do it too well, if at all. (Don't take my word as knowledge, I was seriously sleeping during that class)

But yeah, if your CMOS is controlling APM(ACPI) and the battery is dying, you'll notice it even when the computer is running. Check in DOS and you'll have your answer.

YMMV.

Zilla360

You could always use NTP to correct drift.

slash000

You can always tell your computer to periodically synch time over the internet with time.nist.gov or windows.time.com.

bloodr

There's a program you can use to tweak windows to check the time at an interval you select. It's called Internet Time. You can find it here.

Tofystedeth

Thanks bloodr, I'll give that a shot. The weekly updates just weren't cutting it and windows doesn't allow you to change the schedule.

Daedalus

Are you sure it's your computer, and not the clock you're comparing it to? I thought my computer was losing time once. It turned out my alarm clock was gaining time.