This is going to sound crazy, but this works!
Over a two-day period, I tried every suggested remedy that I could find, both on the blogs and on Microsoft's outdated and virtually worthless "knowledge" base - I re-booted in Safe Mode and ran SpyBot Search & Destroy, then I replaced the battery and reset the BIOS, I selected and re-selected all the known time servers on the planet. I tried everything - even suggestions that I knew couldn't possibly resolve the issue, everything except truly dangerous things involving tampering with registry entries, and replacing the motherboard. The clock would still begin to lose time as soon as it was reset. Not only was it messing with virtually every time-sensitive application on the system, but it was literally driving me crazy.
I finally ran across an entry on an Adobe InDesign blog, posted by a user who, like me, was a graphic artist, and whose clock issues were messing with his workflow. He had inadvertently discovered a fix for his system while updating his creative suite. He recommended that I try the same thing, so as the last resort of a man clinging to the ragged edge of my sanity, I did... and it worked!
In this order, I uninstalled Adobe Reader, changed the Time Zone on the clock to anything other than the correct one for my location, then re-booted the system. When it came back up, I re-set the clock to the correct Time Zone, then re-installed (directly from a new, free download) the latest version of Adobe Reader, then re-booted.
That was yesterday, and the clock hasn't lost one second since. I have an atomic clock on the wall over my monitor and both clocks advance to the next minute within milliseconds of each other. I was just so thrilled with this that I had to come back to this blog and share it in the event that it just might work for someone else.
BTW, I'm running Win7 64.
Michael in Strawberry