Laptop not keeping time

[JDPower]

My laptop keeps losing the system time, have replaced the BIOS battery a few times now and it doesn't seem to fix it for long. The current battery has only been in about a week or two, and already the system clock is resetting on every restart again (brand new, proper brand battery).

Anything obvious spring to mind before I take it all to bits looking for a physical fault? (I did check the battery contacts when I put the last battery in and it appears to making perfectly good contact with the battery)

[hazelnut]

JD it could be your board 

No screensavers or anything?

[nukecad]

Do you have a multimeter to test the battery output?

If it's OK for a week or two before cropping up again then you may just be fitting old or duff batteries that are dying after a week or two, especially if you're getting them all from the same source.
They have a long shelf life but it's not infinite.
Plus if you are getting cheap/counterfeit ones then who knows, and unfortunately there are many fakes out there even on places like Amazon.

Other than that then as you say check the contacts, a pencil eraser is good for cleaning contacts.

Also I'm sure that you already have but check that your Time Zone setting is correct and it's not resetting to a different time zone.
(Something niggles me that I read somewhere that using a VPN to say that you are in a different country can sometimes have an effect on the time zone settings?).

Then a good malware scan just to make sure that it's not an infection that is causing it. (Unlikely but possible).

 

[JDPower]

19 hours ago, hazelnut said:

JD it could be your board 

No screensavers or anything?

It's nothing to do with anything running, it's resetting the time when it's been left off for a while, exactly as you would expect with a dead bios battery.

10 hours ago, nukecad said:

Do you have a multimeter to test the battery output?

If it's OK for a week or two before cropping up again then you may just be fitting old or duff batteries that are dying after a week or two, especially if you're getting them all from the same source.
They have a long shelf life but it's not infinite.
Plus if you are getting cheap/counterfeit ones then who knows, and unfortunately there are many fakes out there even on places like Amazon.

Other than that then as you say check the contacts, a pencil eraser is good for cleaning contacts.

Also I'm sure that you already have but check that your Time Zone setting is correct and it's not resetting to a different time zone.
(Something niggles me that I read somewhere that using a VPN to say that you are in a different country can sometimes have an effect on the time zone settings?).

Then a good malware scan just to make sure that it's not an infection that is causing it. (Unlikely but possible).

 

Yeah, I have a multimeter (electronics used to be my thing many moons ago). As I said, the batteries were brand new (bought new as I also thought the ones I was using were maybe duff stock), proper brand from a proper shop (and dated, so not old stock).

So opened it up tonight. Checked the battery voltage of the one I'd put in, and was registering virtually full, so wasn't some strange battery issue (I had considered maybe there was a short or something draining the batteries flat).

What I did notice though, and I'm hoping was the problem - the plastic holder the battery sits in seemed loose on the board. There's one slightly springy battery contact on the base of the holder and one on the edge. The one on the edge comes up from the motherboard through the bottom of the plastic holder and when putting the battery in, the upward pressure of the slightly springy bottom contact could push the holder up away from the board a couple of mm, and potentially breaking contact with the battery. It would stay down if pushed down, but it took very little pressure to make it lift up, certainly a slight knock of the laptop could make it spring up. So have put a dab of glue under the battery tray and fingers crossed that was it. Will find out when I turn it on again tomorrow I guess

[hazelnut]

Don't forget to let us know if the old ''dab of glue'' fix worked !

(hope so)

[JDPower]

On 27/10/2020 at 05:04, hazelnut said:

Don't forget to let us know if the old ''dab of glue'' fix worked !

(hope so)

It worked  Certainly goes down as one of the more unusual issues I've come across lol, and would have driven me mad if I'd not actually noticed the battery tray was moving.

And thanks for the suggestions guys :)

[usmantemuri]

Change the time in the bios and if that doesn't work change your cmos battery

[hazelnut]

26 minutes ago, usmantemuri said:

Change the time in the bios and if that doesn't work change your cmos battery

Read the post above yours.

He fixed his problem.