Clock Keeps Going Back Exactly 20 Minutes?

Hey Guys,

Well, I'm having a problem. I noticed my clock was incorrect yesterday. It was very off, like an hour, so I synced it, and kept my eye on it. After some time I realize it was wrong again. I left it to be dealt with today.

Today it has been happening so often that the clock is practically worthless.

I went over to Radio Shack and bought a new CMOS battery even though my motherboard is only a year old, but that didn't fix anything. Since I was annoyed I left the Windows Clock settings open on a monitor and watched it. Something caught my eye and I looked at it. It went back exactly 20 minutes. I'm not sure if the seconds were 100% accurate to 20 minutes, but it sure seems like it was. Since then, I have not seem it go out of sync again, but it's only been 45 minutes.

My 3 anti virus programs are all showing me clean. I did install some new RAM sticks and the FireMV the other day, and there were no Windows updates yesterday. The problem seemed to happen the day after adding the new hardware, I don't think they're related. I am not having any other problems, and this system never gives me problems. It's run 24/7 for work, and kept up pretty well.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

(OS = Win2008 Enterprise 64 Bit)

First check to make sure the time zone is set correctly. Next try re-registering the Time Service by typing the following commands at the command prompt (Start | Run | Type cmd, and click OK), and hitting ENTER after each...

net stop w32time
w32tm.exe /unregister
w32tm.exe /register
net start w32time

Thank you for the advice. I ran the command suggested, looks like it went smoothly, and the clock is working again.

I'll be sure to let you know if it still has problems!

Thank you!

Thank you very much for your help. Your suggestion completely resolved the issue. It's been about 24 hours, and the time is still dead on. I really appreciate the help, really.

I forgot to originally put it in the first post, but my OS is legit Win2008 Enterprise 64 Bit. I'm not sure if this is a common Windows problem, or maybe just specific to this version, or caused by programs I'm running. If anyone has any ideas about that, you'd satisfy my curiosity.

Thanks again for helping me fix the problem!

Well, the problem is back now! It last for a good day, but now out of the blue it's almost 2 hours behind! I can't think of anything new that I am running. Entering the commands previously mentioned really seemed to resolve the problem, and it seems like it just came back. What do you think would be causing the Windows Time Service to go screwy?

Thanks!

did you check to see if your time was set properly in the bios. Often times I find this to be the problem with time issues. Also I have encountered issues in Windows XP where it won't sync with the NTP server unless you manually do it. I am not sure if one of the updates broke this or what the deal is. The issue was so minor that I never looked into it

It's definitely not a sync problem. The clock losing a few seconds over time is ok, but losing hours within minutes should never happen, even if a sync can correct it.

I figured if I set the Windows clock that it would change the BIOS clock as well. Now that you mention it though, I have an A: drive now(not physically), so my BIOS turned on the floppy disk that I don't even have. Maybe it reset something when I switched out my RAM and video card. Tomorrow I will go into the BIOS and make sure that is set correctly, which I suspect it will be.

Foxie3a said:

It's definitely not a sync problem. The clock losing a few seconds over time is ok, but losing hours within minutes should never happen, even if a sync can correct it.

I figured if I set the Windows clock that it would change the BIOS clock as well. Now that you mention it though, I have an A: drive now(not physically), so my BIOS turned on the floppy disk that I don't even have. Maybe it reset something when I switched out my RAM and video card. Tomorrow I will go into the BIOS and make sure that is set correctly, which I suspect it will be.

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I could be mistaken but I don't believe that the OS will adjust the bios as the OS usually uses systim as its own measure.

try to sync with another server... also are you turning off your computer when this happenes? if yes it culd be the cmos battery

Does it keep losing time. or will it stabilize after awhile?

Do you have SP2 installed, and what's the version number of the installed w32time.dll? Also check the Event Viewer logs for any errors related to W32Time. And what happens when you run the following command from an elevated command prompt?... w32tm /resync.

that is odd that is keeps rolling back. you might want to see where your computer is synchronizing its time with. i believe that running "net time" from a command prompt should show you where your system syncs its time with. this is assuming that it works the same on win2k8 as win2k3. here is what mine shows:



that tells me that my computer gets its time from the computer "DC1" which happens to be my primary domain controller.

It's not syncing time from an incorrect source. The next sync is scheduled for a week from now, and it goes screwy many times a day, which is way more often than it syncs.

There is one warning in the event viewer related to time. Event ID: 36.

The time service has not synchronized the system time for 86400 seconds because none of the time service providers provided a usable time stamp. The time service will not update the local system time until it is able to synchronize with a time source. If the local system is configured to act as a time server for clients, it will stop advertising as a time source to clients. The time service will continue to retry and sync time with its time sources. Check system event log for other W32time events for more details. Run 'w32tm /resync' to force an instant time synchronization.

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The system keeps losing time, it'll never get better, only worse. I am not shutting off the system. In fact one of the only times it's been off is when I performed the upgrade. It's been off maybe 5 times in its life, all because of upgrades. It's run 24/7, with a very light load. As mentioned before, it's a new CMOS battery now.

I don't think I have SP2 installed, however I am up to date because I have Windows Update enabled, and I have no updates that need to be installed. I install them when I do. There were no updates when this problem started.

W32Time.dll version is 5.2.3790.0

What happens when I resync in command prompt:

Sending resync command to local computer
The command completed successfully.

Click to expand...

Typing in Net Time... It sat there doing nothing for 10 seconds, then said:

Could not locate a time-server.
More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 3912

Click to expand...

I'm having to hit refresh for my google search of "Time" everytime I want to know what time it is!

Foxie3a said:

It's not syncing time from an incorrect source. The next sync is scheduled for a week from now, and it goes screwy many times a day, which is way more often than it syncs.

There is one warning in the event viewer related to time. Event ID: 36.



The system keeps losing time, it'll never get better, only worse. I am not shutting off the system. In fact one of the only times it's been off is when I performed the upgrade. It's been off maybe 5 times in its life, all because of upgrades. It's run 24/7, with a very light load. As mentioned before, it's a new CMOS battery now.

I don't think I have SP2 installed, however I am up to date because I have Windows Update enabled, and I have no updates that need to be installed. I install them when I do. There were no updates when this problem started.

W32Time.dll version is 5.2.3790.0

What happens when I resync in command prompt:



Typing in Net Time... It sat there doing nothing for 10 seconds, then said:



I'm having to hit refresh for my google search of "Time" everytime I want to know what time it is!

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May be a firewall problem.

I don't know how a firewall would be stopping the clock. Either way, there has been no change in a firewall in a long time.

The problem is still here. I rebooted and went into my BIOS to see the system time. The time wasn't changing in the BIOS. The seconds were just sitting there, never going up. Aren't they supposed to be actively changing in the BIOS? I'm thinking my physical clock on the board is messed up. I've never heard of this happening before. I'm thinking about clearing my CMOS, hoping that'll help it, but other than that, I don't have any ideas. If I can not fix the issue, I will RMA the board.

I thought I narrowed it down to a certain program because I stopped running it, and my clock was working fine for about 24 hours, but tonight around 2:30AM it rolled back about 50 minutes. The only thing I can think of is that it happens when a lot of system memory is cached.

Task manager says 20,028MB is cached, and 105mb free. I can't tell what program is caching that much, but I know that my anti-virus scans make that number go up. It seems to be related, but I can't force it to happen.

I do notice a lot of atikmdag red errors in the event log, they're always going on. I remember this happening before also, I think it's an ATI driver thing on Win2008, doesn't seem to cause any problems though.

The time went wrong around 2:30, and I notice a W32 Time alert at 2:22. It says it hasn't synced in 86,400 seconds and won't be able to. I wonder if that's causing a problem.

This one really has me stumped. I don't think it's a hardware problem, I think it's software. Anymore ideas?

Stratus_ss said:

I could be mistaken but I don't believe that the OS will adjust the bios as the OS usually uses systim as its own measure.

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I have more then one PC that bases the time off what is set in the BIOS. My NC6000 and Smoothwall being the first two examples off the top of my head.

Adragontattoo said:

I have more then one PC that bases the time off what is set in the BIOS. My NC6000 and Smoothwall being the first two examples off the top of my head.

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it depends on the OS i believe. for example, i had one of my linux systems to sync the operating system time with the bios on boot and on shutdown, it resyncs the time to the bios so that when the system is shut down, the bios has an accurate time.

but i am not aware of windows working that way, however, i could be wrong.

I have a new warning in the event viewer that I haven't seen before.

The time service has set the time with offset 31269 seconds.

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I found a thread that seems very similar to my problem, but I don't have an account at that site.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Windows/Windows_Vista/Q_23156192.html

Any ideas? I'm thinking about formatting and reinstalling Windows. If that doesn't correct it, maybe consider my hardware clock defective?

Foxie3a said:

I have a new warning in the event viewer that I haven't seen before.



I found a thread that seems very similar to my problem, but I don't have an account at that site.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Windows/Windows_Vista/Q_23156192.html

Any ideas? I'm thinking about formatting and reinstalling Windows. If that doesn't correct it, maybe consider my hardware clock defective?

Click to expand...

I had one, let me see if i remember my psw, and ill pm it to u