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I have a series of computers in the company I work for that all suddenly started to lose track of time and start falling behind a few seconds to a minute in terms of system time (until Windows synchronizes it back to the correct time). The issues are suddenly popping-up one at a time and are all coming up on the same model of computer we have been dealing with (They are all fairly old models from about 2009). Our newer machines dont seem to have this issue and we have replaced the CMOS battery on the systems having this issue but they appear to still have the problem which leads me to believe that the problem is not related to the CMOS but rather the RTC on the motherboard.

So my questions would be:

  • Is it possible that the Real-Time clock on the motherboard has run its course and has become too worn out to keep up?

  • Can software on the computer slow down the system to a point where the RTC is affected?

  • Is there software / malware out there can directly affect the motherboard's RTC?

  • What is the average lifespan of a RTC?

tastydew
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  • They should have built-in diagnostics to test stuff... At least Dell computers have. And that diagnostic usually was fairly panicky about RTC discrepancies... Have you tried that? – AcePL Jul 14 '15 at 08:46
  • Unfortunately these machines do not have any sort of diagnostic software. Is there anything available on the internet that can test the RTC? – tastydew Jul 14 '15 at 15:27

1 Answers1

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Perhaps it's leap seconds skewing the clock.

Leap Seconds in Windows

Why is my NTP controlled computer clock two minutes ahead?

For more accurate clocks, don't use the cpu as much.

CPU heating is correlated with clock skew, which can be detected by observing timestamps (under the server's real identity). Wikipedia ClockDrift

Community
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user468797
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  • Wouldn't this cause the system to run ahead of the actual time instead of behind? All the systems having this issue are falling behind by about 5-60 seconds – tastydew Jul 13 '15 at 18:54
  • Quote from original question... `Our newer machines dont seem to have this issue and we have replaced the CMOS battery on the systems having this issue but they appear to still have the problem which leads me to believe that the problem is not related to the CMOS but rather the RTC on the motherboard.` – tastydew Jul 13 '15 at 19:02
  • are the "bad" computers physically near each other? maybe your wall power is bad. – user468797 Jul 13 '15 at 19:07
  • These computers are distributed at different locations around the country. – tastydew Jul 13 '15 at 19:31