Motherboard Battery

[Mark2K]

Hi All,

I have a PC where the time is running slow (by about 30 mins as of last night). I've reset the time once and its slowed down again. I'm thinking this may be a motherboard battery problem, however, the computer is on 24/7 so could the battery still be the problem?

Many thanks

Mark

 

[ski]

Check if the clock in BIOS loses the same amount of time as the Windows clock.
If it does, then the MB's clock chipset may be defective.
You can see if replacing the CMOS battery fixes it, but as you mentioned the battery should not be the cause if the system runs continuously.

If the BIOS clock does not lose time, then disable any screensavers, and disable power management in BIOS.

If no luck, then do a clean boot to troubleshoot it.

If still no luck, then install an atomic clock utility to keep the correct time.

 

[Mark2K]

Hi ski,

Thanks for the reply.

I already already checked and the the BIOS clock is lossing time. I am using gentoo linux setup with only a command line interface. I think I will post a message to one of their forums to see if it could have been something I have done.

many thanks

Mark

 

[felixc]

Some clock chips can be tuned by software. Check if there is any such utility for the RTC used on your motherboard.

30 minutes a day is a lot of drift! Even a low battery would not cause this. Is there dirt around the crystals on your motherboard?

 

[stallard]

If your running Linux you can try adjtimex, this will adjust the time when the system is running.

http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linuxcommand.org/man_pages/adjtimex8.html

 

[Mark2K]

Hi felixc,

Thanks for the reply. It's not running 30 mins a day this would have been since Monday. I will have to down it and have a look for any dirt.

Hi stallard,

I will have a look at the prog.

Many thanks

Mark