Clock (Vista Home Premium)

[livestrong]

Hi- The default clock looses an hour a few times a week, can anyone give me a clue why this is happening, other than a haunted machine? thank you.

[bigaldoc]

I don't know whether you're observing the clock in the system tray or the sidebar gadget clock, but it most likely isn't a Vista problem, although anything is possible! The "clock" is really the time being read from the BIOS of your machine and that's where the problem usually lies. Have you looked in the BIOS at some of the settings to see if you can spot anything? How old is the battery that's on the motherboard?

[livestrong]

Big Al, Thank you for your reply, the problem is with the system tray clock, can you guide me how I can get to the BIOS settings for the clock, thank you. The machine is about a month old, I suppose the battery on the motherboard might be bad?

[bigaldoc]

If it's the Dell you mentioned in an earlier post, here's a clip of the instructions from my Dell user manual:

<hr>Entering System Setup
1 Turn on (or restart) your computer.

2 When the blue DELL™ logo is displayed, you must watch for the<big> F2 prompt</big> to appear.

3 Once this F2 prompt appears, press <F2> immediately.

NOTE: The F2 prompt indicates that the keyboard has initialized. This prompt can appear very quickly, so you must
watch for it to display, and then press <F2>. If you press <F2> before you are prompted, this keystroke will be lost.

4 If you wait too long and the operating system logo appears, continue to wait until you see the
Microsoft® Windows® desktop. Then, shut down your computer (see "Turning Off Your Computer"
on page 59) and try again. <hr>

Just be VERY careful while you're in there - don't do any wily-nily changing by accident!

[kaplinb]

In your original post you mentioned an hour (not minutes or seconds), which is "lost" - does it mean that your computer clock "jumps" for an hour from time to time?

If so, most likely your Vista was set for different time zone, not the one where you are. Or, the option to adjust the setting to Daylight Saving Time was not selected.

Please see Windows Help and How-to: Set the Clock and especially p.5.

If this is not the case, try to synchronize your clock more often. See Dealing With Windows Vista Time Sync Problems for details and step-by-step instructions.

I think you don't need to access BIOS to solve your problem.

Good luck!

[livestrong]

Thank you for your reply-- The clock was loosing one hour, so before I looked at the BIOS I checked the DST setting and you were right-- it was not checked, thank you.