RTC Not Keeping Time?

[leacris1]

My real time clock on my T60 is running slowly.

I have never seen this before.

I am running Windows 7 and have disabled all the shut off timers, etc.

The laptop is otherwise running just fine.

Anyone have any ideas as to what might be wrong?

Chris

[RealBlackStuff]

Check these out:
http://www.petri.co.il/update_the_time_ ... ows_xp.htm
http://mintywhite.com/windows-7/7mainte ... me-how-to/
http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp40/its.cfm

[leacris1]

Check these out:
http://www.petri.co.il/update_the_time_ ... ows_xp.htm
http://mintywhite.com/windows-7/7mainte ... me-how-to/
http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp40/its.cfm

I understand how to set the time.

The problem is that the clock is running slowly. I have had to synchronize the time 6 times today with the clock being anywhere from 15 mins to 2 hours behind.

Chris

[rkawakami]

Two possible explanations that I can see:

- weak CMOS (aka, backup) battery; replace it with a fresh one
- oscillator on the motherboard is defective; replace it with a fresh one

The RTC on the motherboard can be affected by a couple of things. One of the likely subjects is a crystal. Look for a component that's marked with a "Y" number (i.e., Y4 or Y6) or has a marking like 32.768. If loose from the motherboard, then the RTC will not work correctly. Somewhat harder to notice is if one of the other components nearby that is also connected to the crystal, usually a capacitor, has changed values. This would be enough to throw off the clock. You may be able to run the PC Doctor for DOS RTC test to verify that it's bad. Download a copy of this diagnostic from here:

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... ty48ww.exe (Bootable CD image)

You'll need a program that can properly burn the .ISO file onto a CD.

[leacris1]

I was able to run PC Doctor on my laptop and it returned an error of 'clock update failed' [or something like that] which didn't sound to me like a problem with the clock itself but with whatever mechanism transmits the time to the system.

I thought about updating the BIOS but it was already up to date. I therefore elected to downgrade the BIOS, on the off chance part of the code in BIOS was responsible for the problem.

Amazingly enough, it worked! My clock is now keeping the correct time.

Chris

[goraman]

I just found the same problem after having the new Bios update installed 2.29-1.08
My clock is now 1hour and 15 minutes fast.
Any one else have this happen?
I just reset the time,Now lets see.

[rkawakami]

Amazingly enough, it worked! My clock is now keeping the correct time.

Please keep us up to date on whether or not this BIOS downgrade cured the problem. I've found some other threads which mention this problem but no fixes (other than replacing the motherboard, but that could also mean the BIOS version changed as well).

[leacris1]

Please keep us up to date on whether or not this BIOS downgrade cured the problem. I've found some other threads which mention this problem but no fixes (other than replacing the motherboard, but that could also mean the BIOS version changed as well).

I will be happy to.

As of 8:35pm EDT it was still keeping perfect time, which is 20 hours after applying the downgrade.

Chris

[leacris1]

Still good.

Chris

[leacris1]

It is still working fine.

I'm calling it fixed.

Chris