Solved OS reporting wrong time, faulty Mainboard?

[Lee K]

So I have been experiencing my time in Windows 7 64 bit OS being out by large amounts. Years off, random dates from the past and even into the future. I did a lot of investigation into this and to me it seems to point to error in communication between the OS and the MB?

The BIOS has never reported an incorrect time since being set. When I first installed the mainboard I noticed on first start that the bios clock was incorrect and so I set it to the correct date and time, since then it has always showed the correct time, so this eliminates a bad battery.

This is a completely different problem from those people that experience a few minutes difference over time that the computer is on and time sync from time servers. This is a few days time difference on startup to years of difference.

I have had some other issues with my computer. I just had my Video card fail, and when it did it simply made a loud squealing sound and the computer monitor went black - no input from video card. I pulled the video card, cleared CMOS and started OS with the onboard grahpics. Upon entering the OS I see my time and date is from 2 years ago, completely different day and time, bios reports correct time as usual.

I also have had the HDD activity light and power light stop working, just a short while ago. I have looked carefully at my connections and nothing looks bad, they just both stopped working. Computer runs fine. Not sure if this is all coincidental but it makes me wonder if the Mainboard is coming "unglued" so to speak. It still runs fine now with the onboard video. To do a complete diagnosis I will have to pull the mainboard, put it in a different case, try video card in another mainboard to make sure the PCI-e slot hasn't malfunctioned, but I am sure it is the Video card.

Add to this my other weird problem with the SATA optical drives, is this my baddddd or what?

Anyone else experience Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H instability? This is getting to be quite ridiculous... Electrical Ninja's?

And in other news the world is coming to an end, did you hear?

 

[Shadowjk]

What does the Current Time and date state in the BIOS?

Josh

 

[Shadowjk]

Have you tried to change the Date and Time?

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/943-date-time-change.html

Josh

 

[TCG]

Based of what you are saying and all the little quirks, the mobo would be highly suspect for me as well. I'm slightly biased in that opinion though, I've never had a good track record w/ Gigabyte.

 

[Lee K]

The bios reports the correct time since I set it about 1 month ago. I have set the correct time in OS every time it has reported an incorrect time. :sarc: this is pretty basic stuff... TCG I like your answer best so far... but it's not an answer I like to hear...

 

[Shadowjk]

If the BIOS Reports the Correct Time and Date then the Mobo isn't the cause it may be the OS - Is Windows set to retrieve Date and Time Automatically from the Web?

Josh

 

[Lee K]

Yes it is, I have tried various servers, they work just fine, if I click on update now they give me the correct time back. I tried the gov one and now am set to the windows time server, which seems to give me the right time back as well.

Right now I am more concerned about my other problems, it will take me some time to build 2 test computers to trade off parts back and forth to positively identify if the mainboard is the problem or it is the video card and, or, OS. Swapping mainboards, unfortunately I don't have another PCI-e video card to test with. Thanks for the help.

 

[Britton30]

I'm gonna vote for TCG's answer as well. You've already tried everthing I would have tried.
I have a Gagabyte Motherboard too, had to RMA it twice before I got a good one. I don't have much faith in their reliability either.
This would ba a good(?) time to look at upgrades.

 

[theog]

Try replacing the CMOS battery.

 

[smarteyeball]

Try replacing the CMOS battery.

If the time in the BIOS is wrong again already then that's the best thing to try.

 

[Lee K]

As I stated above, the time in the bios has never been wrong! Never! So why replace a perfectly good battery? In many, many years I have never once seen a bad bios battery... never...

In my best conclusion from what I know about the problem, I think it is from system instability. I have had a lot of blue screens for awhile there, interspersed with periods of stability, the OS seems to be be resetting calendar and date to wrong time and ignores the perfectly good bios time, this occurs between the pings to the net server times, so the date is wrong till the next crash or time correction. Wish there was a option to sync to bios time and date rather than, simply an OS setting or relying on pings to time servers.

Having said all this I have recently come upon some other useful discoveries. Check my other posts. I believe I have finally maybe found the instability problems all lead back to a overheating video card. Which I thought was toast but it is not. See my other post on this.

 

[Britton30]

Please a bit more civility will get you better help. I have seen a bad CMOS batt several times, they do run down since they are constantly connected, even with power on.
Also in Services see that Windows Time it set to Auto Start.

 

[MacGyvr]

I'm putting my money on the bet that you have the wrong time zone chosen in Windows. Windows keeps no time of its own. It reads from the BIOS on bootup and then at some point checks with a time server, but the time in Windows is displayed after adjusting for the time zone and Daylight Savings.

What you haven't told us is the error range. If the correct time in BIOS is say, 2 pm, what time does Windows report?

 

[Lee K]

"Years off, random dates from the past and even into the future." (taken from the second sentence from my original post).

Quite often in skimming the original post you can miss something important that was said, it happens to me too and once I am told, I usually apologize with, ahh, sorry I missed that from your original post...

Again I repeat this date issue seems to have gone away since my BSOD's have stopped, most all my BSOD's were due to overheating video card. Only reason why I brought this up is, I have never seen a time act like that, being so far off. If it was just like you said, a difference in time zone, a few minutes off, 1 minute added every day or something, I would know it is either a battery or time server issue. Also, the time in the bios has always been correct from the day I set it up a month and half ago. Only the OS time has reported incorrectly. Only other thing that might explain it, is perhaps malicious thing like virus or worm, or even hacker intrusion.

Please humor me, I was 2 days ahead of schedule till someone advised me it actually was Tuesday, not Thursday already. I didn't really realize I was that dependent on computer time.

I am not a software engineer, but if your OS time is set to the time server, and your OS gets the time from the bios, this sounds conflicting, or are you implying that the OS can adjust your bios time? Is this possible? You wouldn't think this is possible if you have your bios uncacheable. Also remember when they have had faulty processors that could not add correctly and such when they hit certain prime numbers, that was years ago but sometimes makes you wonder. Oh and I should mention I cleared my CMOS recently and it keeps the correct time after that, so the chip whether is is a numeric processor (I believe it used to be like that) or embedded is fairly independent.

 

[Britton30]

Glad to hear you have it figured out Lee. More info is In This Post about how time synch works. I think the BIOS is running a separate clock otherwise you wouldn't have had this issue.