Computer has trouble keeping time.

[Jayce]

CMOS battery, right? Eh. I replaced that thing a week ago. But I have no idea how old that battery is or anything else. Here at work we have a bag of them and just go through and grab one if we need one. But, nonetheless, I replaced the battery. I heard a report that the computer was still having issues. So I went and looked at it again.

I changed the time in BIOS, not that I expected it to fix anything, but I gave it a shot. Then I booted into Windows, which this system is 2kProSP4, and I looked at the detailed time where you can see the second counter go.

Well, I noticed something. Every 5 seconds or so, there will be a hesitation on a second. It's enough to notice if you're staring it down, but not enough to notice if you didn't know what to look for. This results in the time being about 20 minutes off the following day.

Still think it's the battery? Maybe it was a bad one. I don't know. I thought that once the battery was dead - it was dead. I find it a little strange that it's almost exact every time - every 5 seconds it hesitates for 1. Sign of mobo going?? The computer has no other signs of trouble, though...

 

[KSoD]

It is still the battery.

 

[Jayce]

I talked to the network admin. He seems to think it's a problem with the time on the server. I'm having a hard time believing it's the battery... every time I've seen a battery go out, the time has been off by a large margin... not just 20 minutes behind every morning.

He's looking into this more for the time being, and I'll wait to see if he comes up with anything. If not, I'll trek back on down with a battery.

 

[superdave1984]

Win2K never did keep correct time. Most Windows OS are terrible about it even though the entire OS relies heavily on the clock.

 

[Jayce]

So, I tried a new battery. The teacher reported that now, the problem is worse.

Could it be a faulty motherboard?? He said everything else seems fine...

 

[KurrentEweser]

Run a program like this. As long as you have internet access you'll never have to worry about the time again


NTP Monitoring

 

[Naphtali14]

It could be a motherboard issue, but im more inclined to agree with Mak213. One way to be sure about it is just get a new battery..

Ps... reena your post has nothing to do with the thread.. what are you doing.. just copy and pasting from some encyclopedia..??

 

[KurrentEweser]

When a computer is on the battery is no longer in the circuit. The clock is then powered by the power supply. So any changes time while the computer on has nothing to do with the battery.

 

[Jayce]

All righty, folks. This problem is still occuring.

The battery has been changed out 3 times. It is not the battery. The battery is perfectly fine. The computer otherwise is completely fine and functional as well.

The trick is, we have a workgroup set up at a small school within the district I work at. We will be upgrading the server and moving them to join the main domain with the rest of the district in the next 2 months. Thing is, we need a domain to implement a time sync. So, as a workgroup, we're kind of stuck.

But I'm wondering if there is a temporary fix of some sort... because each morning his time is off by at least a half hour. There have been 1 or 2 other teachers who complained about the same thing, also with batteries in the CMOS changed. Any ideas on what can be done?

Somebody else in the tech department swears they remember doing something (a setting) that fixed it, but had no idea what it was offhand... so I'm just trying to google around to gather additional information on it.

 

[KurrentEweser]

As long as you have Internet access this will work. Set the interval to reset the clock as needed to correct for errors.


Atomic Clock Sync Information from worldtimeserver.com