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My computers clock seems to lose abvout 5 minutes every day (1 Viewer)

Mike Woods

Agent
Joined
Jan 13, 1999
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37
the title says it all. And I'm not exadurating that figure either. It's very, very annoying.

It only seems to have happened recently.

Athlon 1000, 256MB Ram running Windows XP home edition.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Mike
 

Chris Bardon

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Jul 4, 2000
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2,059
Mine does the same thing occasionally, only under 98 SE and it's not only 5 minutes-sometimes lost 15 or 20 (although not recently).
 

MickeS

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Jul 24, 2000
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It's not the battery, I'm pretty sure of that. I don't know what it is, but every computer I know of at work does the same thing. Mine started out being about 5 minutes behind, it's now 7 minutes behind. This is a brand new PC, my previous one did the same thing. They are running Windows 2000 Professional.
I installed a program called Dimension 4 from http://www.thinkman.com/dimension4/index.html, it automatically sets my computer clock every 15 minutes (or manually, or whatever interval you want) to the correct time (need an internet connection).
The weird thing is that it's not "slowing down" and reaches the 7 minute lag, it just all of a sudden seem to be behind. I can set it, and then 15 minutes later it's 7 minutes behind, and stays there... it slows down a little bit, I'd say a minute or so a year it seems like.
Very weird, but I just accept it now...
EDIT: I just realized that the PC is not BEHIND, it's actually skipping AHEAD... might be different symptoms for the same problem though.
/Mike
 

greg jones

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Jul 26, 2000
Messages
94
The computers at my office do this, also. We thought that it was the battery for the BIOS clock initally. I replaced a couple, but the problem persisted. We found out that it was becuase the workstations had Outlook open all the time. Seems that Outlook is enough of a powerhog that it slows the OS's clock. Don't know if this is your problem, but it fixed ours.
 

MickeS

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I don't have Outlook open more than a few minutes a day, so I don't think that's it, but thank you for the tip.

/Mike
 

Adam

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Joined
Nov 3, 1998
Messages
139
I am not sure if this is your problem, but at my site the server synchronizes the clocks on all the workstations either at boot-up or at certain times during the day. The servers clock was five minutes slow and therefore, everytime it set your clock it would be five minutes behind. Of course this would only be noticed if you set your clock manually to the right time. If you did not change the clock on your computer, you would not notice it because it would just always be five minutes slow.
 

Ruben Zamora

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Sep 5, 2000
Messages
168
Double click the clock on XP and click the Internet Time Tab. It gives the option to Auto synch with an Internet CLOCK. see if that solves your problem.
 

Victor de la Uz

Auditioning
Joined
Oct 8, 2001
Messages
3
I just thought I'd put my $0.02 in also. I thought I was the only one with this problem. If I let it go, I'll be behing over an hour in only one week! I've just gotten used to setting it all the time. It's just one more redundant thing I have to do with Windows. By the way, I'm on the old Win98 first edition and also run an "always-on" DSL connection. Besides the auto-setting time software that you have all so graciously provided links for, can't Microsoft just FIX the problem? That would be a novel idea...
 

Bill Kane

Screenwriter
Joined
Feb 5, 2001
Messages
1,359
Take a look at the automatic, once-a-day freeware pinger Atomic Clock that works with most Windows, either when you boot up or in the background with DSL. I just disable or Exit the icon bug on the tray and forget about it.
I was losing a few minutes a day on my Dell and didn't want to have to think about replacing the battery :frowning:
 

Kimmo Jaskari

Screenwriter
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Feb 27, 2000
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All PC's do lag or speed somewhat, I think, thus the time setting software. I just figured since the amounts were so huge perhaps it was about to act up more seriously than that...
 

Mike Woods

Agent
Joined
Jan 13, 1999
Messages
37
Hmmm, thanks for all those replies.

Ruben, I do that every day ( I have to now!) and it doesn't seem to make any difference.

I'm sure this didn't happen on my old PC.

And I've had this PC for 5-6 months and I'm sure it has only started in the last week or so.

There's that statisitc isn't there that the average home PC of today is more powerful than the computers that put man on the moon.

You'd have thought they could tell the time!

Oh and I'm still on dial-up, so those apps aren't that useful for me.

But thanks anyway.

Cheers,

Mike

(Any more ideas??)
 

AndyVX

Supporting Actor
Joined
Aug 2, 2000
Messages
804
Wow, other people have this problem besides myself? This is the best day of my life :D I'm glad I'm not alone, or going insane.
I've just kind of learned to except it, and every week or so I adjusted the clock back to normal.
I'm going to try out some of these programs though, and see what happens.
Thanks everyone.
 

Daryl Furkalo

Second Unit
Joined
Dec 8, 2000
Messages
373
Interestingly all the clocks on the computers in our office at work do the exact same thing. Two exceptions though, the two computers that have UPS's. Every other one is all over the place with the time.
 

Glenn Overholt

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Mar 24, 1999
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I had that problem for years too, and I don't mean one or two. Probably closer to 10 or 12.

I think that it is due to your software. Something you have set sometwhere in some program that has nothing whatsoever to do with the time is affecting your clock speed.

I was told to change batteries, double check connections and lots of other stuff (I build my own PC's), including getting new mobo's. You think that would solve it? Ha! No way!

The reason that I say that it is software is because of HP. I used to have a 4L and their software had a glitch in it that would kick my clock back exactly one hour. At random, of course. I'd be updating files before they were created.

Glenn
 

MickeS

Senior HTF Member
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Jul 24, 2000
Messages
5,058
Mine synchronized itself (using Dimension 4) 15 minutes ago... now I looked at it and it was off by almost 8 minutes (434.90 seconds ahead to be exact). This is so weird....

/Mike
 

Greg O' Connel

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Apr 10, 2000
Messages
189
I always thought that the clock-losing-time problem was simply the result of not re-booting your computer often enough. I had that problem, but I re-boot every day or so and it's solved.
 

John Chow

Second Unit
Joined
Sep 18, 1998
Messages
312
With Win2K, the OS clock synchronizes with your bios clock after a reboot (or at least I believe so). If you leave your system on with Win2K on for a week, look at the time. Then reboot, you will notice quite a change in the time. XP probably does something similar. Additionally, each computer motherboard manufacturer probably has their own spec as far as the amount of time you can lose in a day. 5 min seems excessive though.
 

MickeS

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Jul 24, 2000
Messages
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If you leave your system on with Win2K on for a week, look at the time.

If that's the case, it would explain why my time is off by 8 minutes... I haven't rebooted in months!

But I think that when I did reboot, I still had the problem.

/mike
 

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