Unexpected time change

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris
  • Start date Start date
C

Chris

We have XP Pro machines operating in a Workgroup and time sync is disabled.
However we have had instances where, after the machine has been up for many
weeks (possibly a month or more) then the year changes to 2036. It only
happens on one machine at any one time. The o/s security it very tight and
so it is not believed to be due to a user or rogue application.

What might cause this? Is it possible to be BIOS related? The times were
definitely correct at boot time.
 
Chris said:
We have XP Pro machines operating in a Workgroup and time sync is disabled.
However we have had instances where, after the machine has been up for many
weeks (possibly a month or more) then the year changes to 2036. It only
happens on one machine at any one time. The o/s security it very tight and
so it is not believed to be due to a user or rogue application.

What might cause this? Is it possible to be BIOS related? The times were
definitely correct at boot time.
Click to expand...

The BIOS supplies the clock time at boot time but it plays
no further role later on. If you maintain some log files for
a while then you will soon know if the problem is caused
by a user playing games or an application running wild.
Use the Task Scheduler to run the following batch file
once ever 10 minutes, then check when exactly the
change occurred.

@echo off
echo %date% %time:~0,5% >> %SystemRoot%\time.log
 
We have excluded the cause of a user playing games or an application running
wild. They are dedicated PoS machines and so the environment is configured
to be very secure. The problem has happened at 2 different sites (on
different days) and is believed to have happened early morning when nobody
was using the system.

Unfortunately our applications only keep log files for 14 days but advancing
the year to 2036 caused them to all get deleted.
 
Excluding potential causes too early during your investigation
increases the likelihood of you never finding the real cause.
Your first step must be to collect evidence - only later on
can you eliminate certain causes.

You can easily avoid loss of your log files by expanding the
batch file I suggested before:

@echo off
echo %date% %time:~0,5% >> %SystemRoot%\time.log
echo %date% | find "2006" || net time \\YourServer /set /yes

This will correct the date before it causes problems while
at the same time giving you your logging evidence.
 
It isn't possible to sync times over a WAN because each site only has
dial-up access at night due to the phone line being needed for voice during
the day.

I've been collecting evidence and have identified A) No user intervention
was involved. B) The time synchronisation service was disabled. C) Our
company's components don't change the date. I am unaware of any other
component that would have changed the date.
 
You're still faced with the fact that the date DOES change,
even though you think that there is nothing that can change it . . .

It is not too hard to reset the date to 2006 if it goes to 2036
for some reason. Here is an easy way. I suggest you try it
on your own PC before installing it on a remote machine.
As I said, this batch file should run every 5 or 10 minutes.

Line1 @echo off
Line2 echo %date% %time:~0,5% >> %SystemRoot%\time.log
Line3 echo %date% | find "2006"
Line4 if %ErrorLevel%==0 (echo %date:~4,10% > %SystemRoot%\date.txt) else
(type %SystemRoot%\date.txt | date)
 
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