On Thu, 2004-12-09 at 11:49, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Kelly,
On Thursday 09 December 2004 08:20, Kelly J. Morris wrote:
...
James - Before I could do much with NTP, I booted up this morning to find yet another new date and time on my system. I'm puzzled as to what could be causing this. Each time, I go into YaST under "clock and time zone configuration" and re-set everything, only to have it boot with incorrect time and date at the next boot-up.
I remember from the ancient days of DOS that a similar behavior was due to a need to replace a battery on the motherboard. Could this also be a hardware issue? It's a P4 2.8 Ghz and only 12 months old.
There is (almost certainly) a battery on your mainboard specifically so as to maintain the CMOS clock chip. Although it should last much longer than 12 months, it could actually be older than the 12 months you've owned the system.
Russell -
How do you power down? Do you turn of the switch on the power supply or on the power strip or unplug the system?
The only time I switch off is when my system locks up on me and I have to do a forced shutdown and cold reboot. Not often, but it happens.
If so, you force your system to rely on the battery for clock chip power. If, on the other hand, you just perform a soft power-down, then on at least some systems there is still some power supplied to your mainboard so that the soft power-up can operate and usually this power is available to the clock chip, too.
I almost always do a soft shutdown. Lucky for me, my computer vendor is just a few blocks away, so if nothing else works, I'll take my computer in for a battery change. I seem to remember that the batteries that needed to be soldered to the board have long-since been replaced by "watch batteries." Thanks. Kelly