What's up with my computer clock??

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Oftentimes it runs slow. Like right now it says 11:44pm when in fact it's more like 12:20am. It does this a lot. But then I'll look at it later, or maybe next time I boot up, and it's back to showing the proper time! If it were a battery, you wouldn't expect it to actually catch up and 'know' the right time later on, right? Could it be something to do with "available resources"? Right now my computer says it has 55% of it's resources available, which is kinda low, but I've seen worse. If it has to do with resources, would you expect it to still know what the proper time really is, even if it can't update the clock output to show it to you all the time? Is this wierd or what?
Thanks,
jc

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

Although the low resources can have an affect on overall pc operations I don't think it affects the clock. It's more likely some other program is "updating" the clock and the reason it gets off. I've never confirmed this but I've read reports that some on line sites can resync the clock to theirs and if it's true could be why it gets off.
Sometimes mine is off too, but it seems to be over a period of time not in a day or two. Considering back in the old DOS or before on-line days the clocks were pretty stable it could be some external program that is resyncing or "updating" the clock.

I don't think it's the backup battery as you would be having BIOS (CMOS) problems losing it's setup too.

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

Joe, could very well be. I was basing my theory on the many PS/2's and Zeos PC's that I worked on.

The Zeos' had a weird one that I'll relate. We got a batch of 486SX25 machines in with 2MB of memory that we were using as Token Ring Bridges, with Olicom NIC cards and bridge software. They would lose the CMOS setting - while it was powered up. The engineers from Zeos (Zeos is now defunct but they were out of Minneapolis) came down to my shop in Kansas City and it turned out there was some noise on one of the bus lines that was causing the CMOS to reset if there was less than 4MB of ram installed. They wound up adding a bypass cap on the bad line to get rid of the noise (and issued an engineering production change to all the other units). The CMOS in the Zeos' defaulted to a 486/33 so when they reset it would go to the wrong speed and when it was rebooted it would come up with a CMOS error. We were rebooting them on a frequent basis as the Olicom bridge program had a lot of problems, at the time.

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

I'm not on any kind of server. How long should a motherboard battery last? I've had this computer about 2.5 years, I guess.

Jon Light · From: Saugerties, NY

Jim--this will probably help you not at all.
I was experiencing the same problem a few months ago. It only happened when I was online and it was fairly dramatic--I would lose around 10 minutes per hour. But all would restore on reboot.
And then it stopped happening?!?!
Since I am the sort of person who tends to miss the correlation between drinking a quart of prune juice and, uh, dramatic bodily repercussions (you really wanted to know that, didn't you) I was unable to recall whether I installed or uninstalled any programs around that time.
That is my first guess, though.

Have you had any encounters with DirectX? I ran into some system conflicts after installing a game that included a DirectX upgrade. It really screwed up my wave player. Could it have affected the clock?
Quien sabe?

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

They normally last longer than that, however, there's always the 10% that "don't get the word".....

However, back to your original statement about going off but after it's restarted it comes back to the correct time. Thinking about that it would say it's not the battery.

Here's something to try, before you power it off for the night (or day) reset the clock to the correct time. Then when you power it back on and restart windows, check the time before you do anything to see if it has changed. If it has changed then the battery is suspect.

Jonathan Cullifer · From: Gallatin, TN

Yep, time to replace that battery. The battery life will also depend on the computer itself. I had an old 386 machine that would eat up a battery in less than a year. We got so tired of putting a new one in that we just let it run with the dead one. Only recently did the BIOS have trouble, and they put a new battery in, checked the system for Y2K compliance (this was back in '99), and it worked wonderully. About that Y2K test, which I am sure you will be curious about, the computer was found to be compliant until the year 2036. That also happens to be the compliance deadline for Windows. Yep, after 2036, you can say good-bye to Windows 95 and 98.

Best regards,
Jonathan Cullifer

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Thanks for all your input, guys. I still don't understand how it could be the battery getting weak if it restores the proper time upon reboot! It hasn't happened in the past few days, so I'll probably try to ignore it for awhile and hope the problem doesn't recur.

Dave Van Allen · From: Doylestown, PA , US , Earth

the grand kids of the folks who putter in basements rebuilding Edison cylinder players and '66 Emmons'

mtulbert · From: Plano, Texas 75023

Jim,

The reason your clock becomes accurate when you reboot is because the windows clock goes to the clock on the computer and gets the time. I think (not 100%) sure that Windows does not use the clock on the computer. It goes to it on bootup to get the correct time and then runs in the background.

Mark T.

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Very interesting, Mark. I didn't realize that Windows had it's own clock, separate from the underlying computer clock. So, now my guess is that low system resources (just from too much multitasking) slows down the Windows clock during a Windows session, and then it corrects from the computer clock on reboot, as you say. Anyway, it hasn't happened lately, so I'm just gonna sit tight.
Thanks again to all who helped enlighten me on all this.
jc

Smiley Roberts · From: Hendersonville,Tn. 37075

Jim,
Ya gotta remember to wind those things,at least,once a week.

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Ole Dantoft · From: Copenhagen, Denmark

Jim,

Since you played so well for me (and numerous others) at Steeldays 2000 in The Netherlands, I'll be more than happy to share this little story with you

I once had a very similar problem :
My computer suddenly began to operate extremely slowly overall, no matter what I was doing. I didn't notice if the clock was running slowly, but everything else certainly was !!

I immidiately suspected a virus, and ran my scanner, but it didn't find a thing.

I then realised, that this had started after I had visited a Web-site, that I knew I hadn't visited before. Just as a wild idea, I then manually deleted everything in the "Downloaded Programs"- and "Temporary Internet Files"-directories, and - presto! - everything was back to normal !!!

This surely wasn't a virus, but maybe a cookie-run-wild, or whatever - I never investigated any further - I was happy it was gone, and I haven't had the problem since !!

Just my 0.02$ !!

P.S. : NO it WASN'T one of THOSE sites !! I guess that might even have speeded up the computer anyway

P.P.S. : If your computer is back to the correct time after a reboot, I frankly wouldn't bother changing that CMOS-battery !

All the best, Jim !!

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Ole Dantoft - The "young" steeler from Denmark !

[This message was edited by Ole Dantoft on 19 June 2000 at 07:49 AM.]

[This message was edited by Ole Dantoft on 19 June 2000 at 07:52 AM.]

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Thank you, Ole! I hope to see you again in 2002, if not before that!
Best,
Jim

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