WHY does my puter clock keep changing?!

[KimRaye]

This will be the 3rd time tonight I'm going to go change it. WHY does it do this? I am used to changing it several times a week but, 3 times in 3 hours?! What's up?!

I have DSL with SBC if that affects your answer.

 

[Dan Murphy]

The small CMOS battery on the motherboard probably needs to be replaced. An easy fix. http://www.liverepair.com/encyclopedia/articles/cmosreplace.asp

Also, you can set the clock, on the clock setup, to maintain itself, sychronize itself periodically with an online source.

 

[KimRaye]

Originally posted by Dan Murphy
sychronize itself periodically with an online source.

Thanks for the link, Dan. I don't understand the online source thing tho. I've changed the clock twice already tonight in 3 hours. WHO knew my puter had a battery?!?! Well, obviously you did!

 

[jfulcer]

Ok, dissenting geek opinion here (after all Dan, I am your go-to geek)

Your CMOS battery on your computer works exactly like your car battery. When the car is off, any electrical device you use in the car is run off of battery. So, if you're sitting there listening to your stereo with your lights on, eventually you will run the battery down.

But if you're driving the charging system keeps everything running, and doesn't drain the battery down (in fact it constantly is charging it).

You CMOS battery is good for maintaining your computers 'settings' when your system is turned off. While your system is on, the clock is run off the of AC power from your outlet.

If you left a computer off for a really extended period of time, that battery would run out. So if it's not CMOS, what is it?

So what does it mean? It could mean your computer is running fine and just has trouble with the time, and you just need to live with it. (see below about 'online time')

Or it could be indicative of a general system failure at some point in the future. The problem is it could run like this forever, or it may stop working tomorrow.

If this was a new PC and still under warranty, I would ask for it to be repaired. If this is an older machine, I would make sure I'm doing faithful backups of your important data, and hope it doesn't go on you.

Dan talked about online time syncing - that's a service that runs on your machine that updates your time if it gets off. There are many of them out there, like http://www.worldtimeserver.com/atomic-clock/

Sorry I can't give you a better answer....

 

[KimRaye]

Originally posted by jfulcer
Or it could be indicative of a general system failure at some point in the future. The problem is it could run like this forever, or it may stop working tomorrow.

If this was a new PC and still under warranty, I would ask for it to be repaired. If this is an older machine, I would make sure I'm doing faithful backups of your important data, and hope it doesn't go on you.

Now, you have me worried!

I have NEVER backed up ANYTHING!

 

[JoNo]

backing up all of your data is an excellent idea @ ANY time, might I add.

 

[Dan Murphy]

What Jeff said, LOL.

I just purchased Drive Image 7, from Norton. I had used Ghost in the past, more difficult to use than DI. DI was so easy, backed up entire drive, about 28 Gig, onto 5 DVD's, in about 30 minutes, never leaving Windows. I do recommend it.

http://www.symantec.com/driveimage/index.html

 

[helenabear]

I will add one thing to what Jeff said... if you have an older computer and are running many programs at once, your computer can get "hung up" on what it is processing and lose time. You didn't say how off the time was, so that is only a guess... you can read this for more http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/dci/timeloss.html

Good luck