System Time not kept correctly after having manually changed BIOS time

So Dell have agreed to resolve the problem. However, they can't just replace the £4 battery; the whole motherboard must be replaced.

Oh well.. it's up to them.

I had a pc in for repair recently, and as an afterthought the owner mentioned it also wouldn't keep time. After the repair was done I tried changing the time. Turned out it was set to wrong time zone. I guess when Windows checked with the time server, it was jumping the clock by a few hours.

Just a thought . . .

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate on an HP 580T with 12 Gigs of RAM.

For about a week now, I'm noticing the system time keeps falling back one hour.

When it was time to "spring ahead" one hour, the clock updated as it should. But Im noticing during the last week or so that the time has fallen back one hour.

I've gone to the change date and time settings and corrected the time but within a few hours, it falls back again.

When I go to the BIOS, the system clock has the correct time so I'm guessing it is something in Windows.

The steps I've taken are:

Virus scan in safe mode: negative results.
Malware scan in safe mode: negative results.

Windows updates are current.
I've disabled synchronization with a network time server.

You don't realize how important the correct time is on you computer until it is wrong!

Any suggestions?

nick003, I'm interested in how this turns out. I think Windows always stores and uses the time in UTC. When it displays it (ie, clock in the taskbar, timestamps for files in explorer, etc.) it applies the registry stored adjustment for timezone (and DST). When it synchronizes time over the internet it's using a UTC source; there's no regard for location. I think that's why you'll find, when booting from some external OS (bootable CD/DVD/USB), that the timestamps for all the files on your internal hard disk are off. The difference being the number of hours between UTC and your particular time zone and DST.

So it seems that even though you've stopped sync with internet time, you still may experience another time shift if it was due to a problem with what was stored in your registry (DST and timezone).

Hi. I have Vista Home but I was having the same problem with my system time. I would turn on my PC and the date would be behind by about one day and the time would display a time early in the morning. I could try syncronizing with the time server, but most of the time that wouldn't work. Even when it did work, the time would be okay for only a short time and then slip back by about a day and a half. This would happen while the computer was on so I know it's not my motherboard battery.

I tried setting the clock in BIOS, but when I started Vista, the time would be wrong again. Then if I went back to the BIOS, the time would be wrong there too.

I also manually set the clock in Vista and disabled syncronization, but the same thing kept happening.

This started about a week ago. So today I finally got fed up and tried a system restore from about two weeks ago. Rebooted and now the time is correct upon boot and stays correct in Vista. I've turned my PC on and off several times to verify it works now.

So this was some sort of software problem, probably caused by some update that was installed within the last two weeks. From now on I'll do my updates one at a time and watch for this problem to come back.