For the past week I’ve been trying to figure out what’s going on with my PC’s clock - (that is - the one that displays time and date).
Every time I turn my PC on, it seems that time and date is back at what it was when I last turned it off. I thought it could be the battery for the mainboard going prematurely bad.
But now I noticed that the clock also somehow stopped while the machine was still on (though unattended). Even if the battery had gone prematurely, it should not matter since the system was up and running.
I’ve tried switching automatic time update on/off a few times, setting the clock manually, checking the Windows Time service, making sure it is started automatically and restarting same to set the clock - but still…
Mainboard is ~ three years old, Asus Z97-AR - latest firmware
CPU: Intel i7 4790
I’m an IT software professional - but use Windows only for Office and home/gaming. Have enough HW insight to build my own PCs - but I don’t have expert knowledge of PC hardware.
It syncs to time.windows.com, like most everyone else. I’m pretty sure it’s a local problem. Battery might cock things up, but it’s very strange that the clock should stop when power is on.
Easy way to confirm if it’s a m/b or Windows problem. Boot into the BIOS and check the time. Some BIOS show the time running and some don’t so you may not be able to monitor it from there. Leave it on for 5 minutes and then shut it down without booting completely into Windows. Leave it off for 5 minutes and then boot back to BIOS and check the clock again.
Alternately, make a Linux boot device, USB or CD and boot to it to see what the clock is doing.
It’s been over a decade since the clock chip was a discrete component on the m/b. These days it’s just one subset of a system-on-a-chip that handles scores of functions.
I took a quick look at NewEgg an you can’t even get clock boards any more.
About all you’ve got left now is the manufacturer website. Check their forums and send off an email to their tech support. There might be BIOS update available but I wouldn’t have much hope of that resolving the problem.
There’s a 3 year warranty on that board so you might be covered that way as well.
You’re assuming the system is designed so the clock hardware can be powered from either the battery or some other source of power. It could be that the only source of power for the circuitry that advances the clock is the battery.
I’d be surprised if this is anything other than a simple battery problem.
I’ll do some reading at the manufacturers site. After a bit of googling I found that some with the same problem managed to fix it by resetting the bios. I can check the battery in the process as well.
Anyway the board should still be covered by the guarantee, so I can get a new one if it all fails. It’s a bit of work replacing it, but hey - experience!
I too am interested to hear more about this. I work in IT and have never encountered this before (wrong clock, yes; sporadically-changing/reverting clock, yes; stopped clock - never).
I mean, at least it tells the right time twice a day.
Turned out I didn’t have the latest BIOS upgrade. I can’t see that that would matter for such a basic function that has ticked along fine for over two years, but it couldn’t hurt to do the upgrade.
The upgrade seems to have kicked the clock back in order. I’m not going to declare that it is fixed yet, as it has only been going for a few hours, but it looks promising.
My only guess so far (and it’s a WWWWAG) is that a recent power outage may have caused a spike that gave the MB a slight hiccup. The PC was off, but connected to power.
I am sure you will be pleased to know that the issue seems to be resolved. No idea why the bios refused to speak to the clock, but now they seem to be friends again. Clocks, eh? Who knows what makes them tick?
