Clock Problems

[Bill Cohagan]

I'm running Windows XP, SP2 on a Dell D600 laptop and the system clock is
not keeping time. It seems to run fine for a while and then, seemingly at
random times, it wanders significantly off; e.g., backing up a few hours.
When this happens the relationship of the system time to "real" time is
random; i.e., the difference isn't an integral number of hours. Most often
the day doesn't change although that too has happened a couple of times. The
day change is generally back to yesterday as opposed to some random day in
the past or future. Whatever the problem is, it affects the BIOS clock.

I assumed this was a hardware problem; i.e., the clock battery, but if I
boot into the BIOS, reset the clock, then let it sit the BIOS clock seems to
work fine. I can also power down after setting the clock in the BIOS, reboot
some time later into the BIOS and the time is correct. So, I think I've
ruled out the hardware.

I did a Windows install/upgrade using the WinXP with SP2 ISO from MSDN. I
had intended to do a "repair", but the install process never gave me that
option, instead offering the "upgrade" option. I assume this was because the
original system was XPSP1 with SP2 added later. In any case it didn't help.

I've tried disabling/enabling the automatic time synch function and it seems
not to affect the problem. As an interim step I've downloaded and installed
the trial version of BeagleSoft's ClockWatch app that allows you to synch
and also to "lock down" the clock -- not allowing anyone (or any program) to
change it. Although this seems to be keeping the clock accurate, it hasn't
yet shown me any blocked attempts to reset the clock.

So, at this point I'm pretty well baffled and would appreciate any
suggestions as to what might be causing this -- or suggestions as to how I
might do further troubleshooting to isolate the cause. I assume it's some
app I've installed that's causing the grief, but have no idea how to isolate
it.

Bill

 

[Guest]

You answered your question yourself in the first paragraph.
Your battery. Not the system battery. It is about the size of a quarter and
you can get one at Radio Shack.

 

[Bill Cohagan]

If the battery in question has failed, then how is the system able to keep
time when powered down (as long as I don't boot into Windows when I power
back up?) See the 2nd paragraph. Also, why does the system lose time when
powered up?

Bill

 

[Bill Cohagan]

After locking down the clock with Clock Watch I now find (from the
ClockWatch logs) that *something* is attempting to set the clock back one
hour every hour (at 23 minutes past the hour(?)). This didn't start up for 4
or 5 hours after I started ClockWatch, but now it appears to be a regular
event every hour. Since ClockWatch blocks these I find that my computer is
keeping accurate time now.

Unfortunately ClockWatch doesn't indicate what program/process is attempting
the modification -- so I still don't know the culprit. The fact that it's
exactly one hour delta makes me think of daylight savings, so I cleared the
"automatic daylight savings adjust" checkbox. We'll see what happens now. I
guess I'll also investigate whether it's possible to lock down the clock via
security settings. If so then perhaps I can find out the culprit via the
event log.

If anyone has any further ideas, please jump in!

Thanks,
Bill