BIOS time slowly losing minutes

[AgentZap]

Could anything else besides the BIOS battery cause the time in BIOS to slowly lose minutes over the week?

It seems to happen more frequently if I put the system in stand by. It is a Dell with Windows MCE.

I'm under the impression that a bad BIOS battery would mean it wouldn't hold the date or time at all. Could a bad BIOS battery also make the time run behind and get out of sync?

 

[doubleOseven]

If not the battery, then it could be a defective board. (does your bios manage to keep all the other settings correctly?)

If the board works fine, other than its time circuit, you could set up your computer to regularly auto-sync with an online atomic clock utility. Use a program like http://www.download.com/Atomic...0-2350_4-10061823.html
so it auto-updates frequently to keep your clock roughly on time.

 

[AgentZap]

Yes, it doesn't lose any settings like the date or any of the other customizable HW options. The time just gets out of sync gradually. The problem with using the various Windows time sync utilities is that they require the user be greater than a limited account and I rarely boot the system into a user other than the limited one.

 

[krnmastersgt]

How old is the bios battery? Basically the system age assuming you didn't swap out the battery any time in between.

 

[Modelworks]

Try the battery, some boards power cmos from the battery only when the power is not present, others use the battery all the time.
Otherwise :


To save cost/simplify they started placing the parts that keeps the timing accurate integrated into the chips.
Sometimes those can start to drift from the design and if they do it will cause what you are experiencing.
It will gain/lose time at anything but the rate it is supposed to.

 

[AgentZap]

It has done it almost within months of owning it, but seems to be worse lately (~2 years later).