Vista clock resetting to future year

Hi all, I have an Acer Aspire 6920G with Vista Home Premium 32.

Each day on booting the clock is resetting to a random future year, 2085, 2075 etc.

Have done full scans with Superantispyware & Malwarebytes, all clean.

I thought a firewall issue might be causing timesync to fail, however I have disabled internet time sync and the problem is still occurring.

The BIOS clock shows the correct time, and as it is resetting to future year and the laptop is fairly new I am thinking the CMOS battery is probably OK, so it must be some kind of software conflict I guess?

Any ideas please? Many thanks.

 

Greetings, 3headed monkey, and welcome to MajorGeeks...

Interesting symptoms. A few quick shots:

What happens if you manually set the time/date: does everything reset correctly?

Do the original symptoms present every time you reboot the machine, or only when starting in the morning?

And, do the symptoms change at all if you boot into Safe Mode?

 

Hi Caliban, thanks for the reply.

Manually setting the date & time seems normal, rebooting also seems ok, it seems to do it only after the date changes to the next day.

I set the time correctly and shut down earlier, it just passed midnight here so I booted up again, date showed as 28/09/12 - 4 days in the future (hour/mins correct). So maybe the longer it's switched off the further it resets into the future?

Laptop then put itself to sleep mode as I'd unplugged the power supply earlier and not plugged it back in. The battery only has a few minutes life on its own now, could this be relevant? Plugged power supply back in, changed to correct date again, rebooted, date still correct. So no point checkng safe mode until tomorrow night I guess.

Cheers

 

Your CMOS battery keeps track of time when other power sources are unavailable. So if you unplug the laptop when not in use and the main battery does not hold a charge for more than a few minutes, then keeping track of time would be the job of the CMOS battery for your laptop.

I would suspect a weak CMOS battery. Try leaving the laptop plugged in to the mains tomorrow night (it does not have to be turned on) and see if it retains the correct time in the morning. That would verify that the CMOS battery cannot keep time by itself.

 

thanks, I will try this tomorrow night and let you know what happens.

 

I just reread your first post and there you stated that the BIOS keeps correct time but Windows doesn't? I've never heard of this and didn't think it was possible since Windows gets its time information from BIOS each time it boots.

I was responding to your second post which definitely sounded like a standard CMOS battery problem. I would still try leaving the laptop connected to electric power overnight to rule out a CMOS battery problem but I may have jumped the gun as to the proper solution. Caliban may have another line of troubleshooting.

 

Good morning...

The Safe Mode check should let us know if some third-party program or setting is causing the symptom - please advise when this test can be carried out...

 

it just passed midnight here so booted into safe mode (laptop unplugged all day). It's now the year 2019, still no flying cars but Apple is in meltdown after everyone got sick of their useless software.

 

I doubt we'll have flying cars by 2019 (ftm, I doubt we'll have flying cars by 2029), but the Apple reference I can believe...

I'm stumped: sure was looking for a 3rd-party software culprit, but if the thing's glitching in Safe Mode then we're at either a Windows problem or hardware/firmware. In agreement with gvstn, this sure does smell like a CMOS battery-type symptom, but that ain't good when we're dealing with laptops - most portables have non-replaceable CMOS batteries...

The fact that it's a fairly new machine indicates the possibility of something wrong with the associated CMOS battery circuitry - maybe a cold solder joint, leaky cap, something like that. If you're feeling froggy, you might look up the Acer repair manual and take off some panels, see if you can spot anything - but be careful.

 

For reference:

The Acer Support site lists a BIOS update dated 2010/04/27 that "Fixes MC sleep SMBus error to cause ARCADE power on", but I can't see the relevance, and I advise you to not consider a BIOS update except as a last resort - still, the link might help with any future downloads and/or problems...

 

Normally I wouldn't jump in on something like this, but...

based on Caliban's comment about this is a fairly new machine, if that's true, and you have an extended warranty/service plan on this laptop, suggest returning to the dealer you bought this from and see if they can repair or replace. Sometimes opening up a computer may void any warranty/plans.

If this is not the case geek on....

 

Thanks for the input guys.

Tonight I'm going to try gvstn's test of having left it plugged in all day, if time is ok that should mean CMOS battery I suppose. If not I'm considering system restore/repair Windows type options. On another site someone was saying they hadn't ever come across CMOS battery problems causing a future date, only past or no time at all.

Just out of interest, if nothing works, would it be possible for some clever person to write a batch file to go in startup that would sync the time when the laptop boots up?

 

To your last question "sync the time when the laptop boots up?", You might give Neutron a try. But I don't think automatically synchronizing the time at boot up is really the correct way to solve the problem. It's merely a short term work around.

Since this has a reasonable possibility of being a hardware problem, as Caliban pointed out in post #9, it could be indicative of other existing problems that haven't yet appeared. If gvstn's test doesn't provide worth while results, think it would be a good idea to follow Ken3's suggestion.

Sorry for butting folks.

 

Thanks plastidust, I will have a look at that. The laptop is definitely out of warranty, also I should have mentioned the battery doesn't work and it relies on the psu (it's not my laptop).

And please, no-one worry about butting in - this is an open forum isn't it All comments are very welcome.

 

Just had an off-the-wall thought: do you have any desktop gadgets enabled? Seems as if I remember a conflict a while back with the Windows desktop clock gadget thingy...if your BIOS is always displaying the correct year, yet the desktop / taskbar display is wrong, then this may be some kind of GUI flakiness going on. I don't know - just grasping at straws...

 

ok, new day, laptop left plugged in all day. have booted into BIOS, then safe mode, then normal Windows, clock correct each time. No desktop gadgets btw.

 

Perhaps it's the flux capacitor that's causing your time problem. Normally you need 1.21 gigawatts for the flux capacitor to function properly...lol

What if you stop Windows from adjusting automatically. Does it keep time properly?

 

yea, I disabled the internet sync early on as I thought it could be a firewall issue. Flux capacitor is at maximum efficiency captain.

gvstn's test seems to indicate CMOS battery, but I'm wondering how the BIOS clock could then show the correct time after I change to the correct time in Windows, this is not possible surely? Or does manually changing it in Windows change the BIOS clock at the same time?

 

Changing the clock in Windows changes the BIOS clock (I never manually set my BIOS clock but just fix the time in Windows and my BIOS clock is automatically adjusted.)

You might want to take the back cover off the laptop to check how easily the CMOS battery would be accomplished. I found this thread with pics http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...erclock-upgrade-9600-ssd-overclock-happy.html and the battery (yellow-sheathed) should be near the memory modules on the left. But it would normally sit under that piece of plastic so I am not sure how easy it is to remove/secure.

I'm fairly sure changing the battery will set things right.

 

I doubt it's CMOS related. From memory, windows warns you of an abnormality with CMOS during boot up. I don't recall you mentionning such a message.

Always random dates doesn't sound like any 3rd party sofware adjusting your time. I'm pretty sure windows clock has no control over BIOS time.

Somethings bound to hit us

 

Can't say that the circuitry is completely ruled out but, the fact that it always jumps ahead in time(by year only) points in the direction of third party application intervention, even though the safe mode test didn't reveal such.

Are there any calendar, reminder or scheduling type of applications installed? How long has this problem existed? Just out of curiosity, what antivirus application is in use?

Yup, I'm searching in the dark with a failing flashlight.

 

i tried something else today. Left everything unplugged for a few hours (so no change in real date) then switched on, year now 2077 and time has changed a bit as well.

So I guess it has to be the CMOS battery?

There are 2 tasks in Task Scheduler, SystemSoundService/Microsoft PlaySoundService Class and TMM/Transient Multi-Monitor Manager. Antivirus is AVG, have previously uninstalled BTNetProtect Plus/McAffee.

 

Good morning...

Shooting in the dark will drive you crazy. Should be fairly painless to lift that back cover and see if the battery is indeed accessible and easily replaceable - if so, a quick trip to a watch shop / jewelry store / CVS for a new battery will certainly eliminate some hair-pulling...

 

Just a quick note that the battery is sheathed with a 2pin connector and seems to be rather rare. I only get a few hits on google shopping and they seem to run ~$20. According to this page the connector is smaller than usual and less common.

 

thanks, yes I am in the UK, I might try a couple of workarounds like that Neutron first although I'm wondering if syncing on startup willl work properly if it's still in the process of connecting to the internet, will try some things out later on.