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Have a new Dell PC and the clock won’t keep time, have checked MS Knowledge base.
Any suggestions?

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Isn’t that a sure sign that you need to replace the battery on the motherboard? It’s a small silver disc-shaped battery roughly the size of a “U.S. nickel”.

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Dave,

What is the clock doing? Does it change time when you reboot, for example? Or is it losing time while in Windows itself? Can you describe the symptoms in more detail?

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The system is 6 weeks old, I leave it running most of the time but haven’t paid close enough attention yet to be more specific. Will monitor for a bit to see when it’s losing and under what circumstance.
Thanks

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Hi Dave
I was having the same problem with my new Dell with Win XP Home until I shut off the Internet time synchronization supplied by MS and started using another time synchronizer. I don’t know exactly what causes the problem, but with my machine, whenever the time was synchronized (once a week is the MS default) the computer would start losing time untill I rebooted it. I tried both the options provided by MS before turning off this feature.

Am now using Atomic TimeSync from AnalogX and haven’t had any more problems. Hope this helps.

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Interesting! I also have problems with my new Dell losing time. I did try changing the clock battery (even though the old one seemed to be fine when I checked it with a voltmeter) and it still loses time periodically. I’m dubious about Internet time synchronization being the problem (it doesn’t seem to fit the pattern in my case), but I’ll try your solution anyway.

By the way, I did find an article in the Dell support web pages about losing time. I don’t recall exactly where it was (and I’m not on a Dell at the moment – my Dell is at home), but you could probably find it by searching. I seem to recall the solution involved resetting the BIOS; however since it was reset anyway when I changed the battery, there may be more to it than that.

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The sad fact is that the RTC in most computers is far from accurate. That’s why Windows manages its own time after booting. You can reset a BIOS, but I don’t see where that would affect the accuracy of a silicon chip.

XP includes the time service as part of the OS, but I disable it and use my own utility – I don’t see any need for one more background process to be running!!

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it’s a known issue, seems worse with Dells. I’m not sure if it’s documented, but it has to do with the cpu cycles. It’s been covered several times in the msnews groups, a search on google should bring up the complete details.

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Dell have a download posted here:

Release Title: System Utilities: Dell Time Keeping Utility, Patch, Windows XP, Multi Language, Multi System, A01

Release Date: 3/19/2002

Description: Dell systems with factory installed Microsoft Windows XP Pro or Home may lose time. Time loss rate has been reported as high as a 20 minute loss per hour.

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Thanks a bunch!! I’ll try that before goofing around with other time-setting utilities. Looks like that was issued after I did my poking around in the Dell Support site, which is why I never noticed it.

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Thanks, in doing some checking myself I stumbled on that time synchronization on Sunday. I turned it off and have proper time since.

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