BIOS & Windows Time

I got my 2nd m17xr3 replacement on Friday. It was screwed up cosmetically, and they shipped me the wrong GPU, so I took the better (2820 vs. old 2720) CPU out and put it in my old m17xr3.

At one point I popped the CMOS battery out of the mobo after trying to push bclk too high. I put it back. Twice.

Since then, BIOS and/or windows time mess up / reset after every power cycle.
I've tried setting time in bios, which seems to stick until I log into windows and update via time server (because windows says it's january 1 2010).

I also reinstalled windows (because I was going to anyway).

Not sure what to do, I know the CMOS battery is securely in place.
Help?

 

Are you sure you have the polarity right? i.e. is the battery in upside down?

 

If it is upside down then so is the battery in my brand new replacement.
I guess it's worth a shot though.

 

So mang, what's the word?

YouTube - ‪Family Guy-Peter Griffin-Bird is the Word‬‏

 

I would guess that if both batteries are the same and one machine works fine, then the battery install position is not the issue ...

 

reflashed bios A04

Bios remembers time perfectly until I sync with a windows time server....then it screws up again....

 

I had a similar issue except Windows kept resetting the time to like 4 hours off. I set it in the BIOS and Windows kept time perfectly after that lol....

 

yeah I set it in bios, and everything's good

Then I notice windows is off by like 5 minutes so i update with like time-b.nist.gov or whatever...and bios thinks it's 2017 all of a sudden...then windows time thinks it's 2010....

retarded.

I'm going to reinstall because of the aero issue + this, + system tray randomly shows as if it has 10000 programs loaded (huge box pops up when i press the ^ button)....and I can't control volume via windows volume control in systray when this happens either. I don't know why it would help the bios time issue, but I sure hope it does for some voodoo magical rainbow reason.

 

Yea man that's nuts...Before you do that you might want to try a CMOS reset. It fixes the B2->B3 stepping issue, maybe it will fix this.

 

CMOS reset as in remove cmos and put back in?
'cause that seems to have started the whole issue.

Problem seemed to have fixed itself after installing wireless adaptor on reinstall....then re-fcked itself up after windows updates all completed.

How often is windows time supposed to sync itself? Forcing time sync seems to worsen the issue, so i'd like to avoid doing it.

 

OK
I'm going to remove cmos battery and replace it with the cmos from 2nd laptop. In between I'll do the power drain thing too.

When I start the laptop back up, should I (pick one):

• Set date and time in BIOS as accurately as possible, or
• Leave bios time and sync windows time, or
• Set date/time in bios and sync windows time

 

ok all 3 options failed to change anything

 

kune - I always recommend setting the BIOS date and time as accurately as possible to start with and let Windows sync to keep it right. The Windows time server I use for sync is time-a.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov. (You can type what you want in the server name... you're not limited to what is in the drop-down menu.)

There is a chance the BIOS EPROM/RTC chip on the mobo is hosed and not saving the time settings. That would warrant a mobo replacement. Is the system time the only BIOS setting that is lost when you go through a power cycle? Given that the problem developed coincidentally with pushing your BCLK settings too far, it may have goofed something up. You may end calling up Alienware and swapping out another system. Or, you could have Alienware send you a replacement mobo if none of the other suggestions I am providing turns out to be helpful.

If there is something wrong with Windows that is causing bad information to be passed to the BIOS, it would be in your registry or possibly a corrupted w32time.dll file, which is in C:\Windows\System32. Have you tried booting to a safe mode command prompt and running SFC /scannow to fix corrupted system files. There's a chance that a BSOD crash mucked up the w32time.dll file and possibly a few more, so you may want to try the SFC /scannow to see if it helps.

Here is a link with some information on Windows Time synchronization. It's not specific to your situation, but may have enough info to help with the troubleshooting process. LINK

It could also be a short. Since you had the system apart, one thing you can check is to look for a pinched wire that could be causing a short. When my R2 was brand new, Alienware dispatched a Qualex rep to come out and install a BluRay burner because they did not install the correct optical drive in my system. The Qualex rep pinched a wire to my right speaker LED and my R2 did all kinds of strange things. As soon as I discovered that problem and corrected it, everything was fine.

Please let me know if one of the above ideas leads to a fix. This is a very unusual issue.

 

It seems the bios chip is hosed.
I swapped out all my parts into the replacement r3 and I've had no issues thus far.
Really odd timing on this issue though.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

 

Bummer. I was pretty sure the BIOS chip being hosed was the reason, but I was trying to be positive by offering a couple of other ideas and crossing my fingers. At least you had the other system to yank the parts out of. Awesome! +1 rep for fixing it.

 

This is really disappointing ... so have you confirmed if it's a software or hardware issue yet?

 

considering the exact same setup works perfectly fine on a 2nd m17x (only diference = different mobo, screen, and keyboard), I think it's safe to say this is a hardware issue...specifically a (partially) toasty bios chip.

Maybe I poked it when trying to take cmos battery out...I duno.
I'm pretty sure the bios chip is right beside cmos socket, so it's possible.

Be careful!