Desktop Clock

[Budderfly]

My desktop clock runs fast. Countless times I have set it back to the time on the weather channel, but it always runs faster and within a few days it's off track again.

Anyone else experience this and/or know what to do? :confused:

[Ronsonol]

Same here. I gain about 5 mins every couple days or so. Not too big of a deal with XP, because you can just syncronize the time back, but still a little annoying.

[Shamus]

If you have XP Budderfly, double-click on the time and go to the "Internet Time" tab. It should synchronize your clock with Microsoft's every few days. As far as fixing it, I don't know that you can :confused:

[Budderfly]

It's already set up to synchronize.

[Ronsonol]

My friend suggested that it could be the cmos battery.

[chrisv]

The CMOS or Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor is an on-board semiconductor chip. Which requires very low power generated from various types of CMOS batteries which are shown below. This chip is used to store important system information and configuration settings while the computer is off and on.
The time is on of the settings that are stored as part of the CMOS. So the "racing" of time forward is likely occurring while your computer is off. The battery can be replaced but the synchronizing solution is just as good.

[Ronsonol]

My computer is never off.

[Shamus]

I doubt replacing the battery would work. If something was wrong with the battery, it'd just reset every time you turn your computer off. The motherboard's BIOS/CMOS probably just isn't very accurate at keeping time.

[Ronsonol]

I wonder if it uses the 1/10 of a second method.

[Shamus]

I don't know, what is that?

[Ronsonol]

Well it was what they used on some US rocket for the patriot system. And since 1/10 is a repeating digit it loses some accuracy when rounded off, b/c obviously a program can't take an infinitly long number, so the round off messes it up.

[Shamus]

.. 1/10 isn't a repeating digit; it's just .1

[Ronsonol]

Sure it is.

Let me go grab some info...

Ok.

1/10 has a non-terminating binary expansion. Now if the computer chops this number off after 32 bits or whatever, the chop off error would build up over time.

Now considering it is even remotly accurate after about 100 hours it would be off by .34 seconds, this doesn't seem to be the problem, but may be part of it.

1/10 in binary is 0.0001100110011001100110011001100...

[Budderfly]

Well my computer is usually always on...

Thanks for the binary lesson though, ;)

I guess it'll just be something I have to live with. :(