Vista clock problems?

[sabre364]

I had a first flight vista basic OS on a cheap dell inspiron 1500 back in march 07 and had clock problems. It would lose a few minutes per hour...I never got it fixed before I switched to xp because the computer was very slow.

On my new MBP, most of us running vista are having major problems with the clock...I think this would be fixed by now but I guess not.

Usually loses a minute or two per hour but sometimes jumps like 4 hrs. I have changed the registry to update every day. My searches online revealed nothing but many people have had this problem and everyone giving advice just assumes a bad CMOS battery.

What about you other vista users on here?

 

[Stridder44]

I had a first flight vista basic OS on a cheap dell inspiron 1500 back in march 07 and had clock problems. It would lose a few minutes per hour...I never got it fixed before I switched to xp because the computer was very slow.

On my new MBP, most of us running vista are having major problems with the clock...I think this would be fixed by now but I guess not.

Usually loses a minute or two per hour but sometimes jumps like 4 hrs. I have changed the registry to update every day. My searches online revealed nothing but many people have had this problem and everyone giving advice just assumes a bad CMOS battery.

What about you other vista users on here?

Not sure about XP and Vista, but going from Leopard to Vista (or Vista to Leopard) the clock always messes up too (and then quickly updates itself).

 

[sabre364]

Not sure about XP and Vista, but going from Leopard to Vista (or Vista to Leopard) the clock always messes up too (and then quickly updates itself).

I'm not switching into and out of leopard regularly...its a simple problem in Vista I am convinced. Randomly it will lose a few minutes, or gain 4 hours - that gaining is more common lately.

I had a time loss problem in my old dell like I mentioned, but when I reformatted the entire drive and ran xp (for the past year and a half) on the same computer, never had a clock issue.

I guess I'll take it up with the school's IT department at some point.

 

[bsheridan]

Do you have any anti-virus software running on vista? (mac afee by any chance?)

I'm not sure about windows on mac but the same problem was happening on my Aunt's Dell running Vista. McAfee was blocking the IP address that the clock accesses. Unblocking it did the trick.

Some other users suggested it could be to do with the internal battery or something, but I'm not sure about that.

b.

 

[sabre364]

Do you have any anti-virus software running on vista? (mac afee by any chance?)

I'm not sure about windows on mac but the same problem was happening on my Aunt's Dell running Vista. McAfee was blocking the IP address that the clock accesses. Unblocking it did the trick.

Some other users suggested it could be to do with the internal battery or something, but I'm not sure about that.

b.

Yeah I saw those posts. I am running Symantec endpoint protection - school's IT folks must have installed them for us.

When I manually update, it ususally (3/4 times) goes through fine. From what I understand that whole mcaffee/firewall block thing was preventing the auto updates creating an error message, that I get only once in a while during manual updates.

And the battery thing seems idiotic on new computers...now I've had two that must have had bad batteries

 

[Stridder44]

I'm not switching into and out of leopard regularly...its a simple problem in Vista I am convinced. Randomly it will lose a few minutes, or gain 4 hours - that gaining is more common lately.

I had a time loss problem in my old dell like I mentioned, but when I reformatted the entire drive and ran xp (for the past year and a half) on the same computer, never had a clock issue.

I guess I'll take it up with the school's IT department at some point.

Um, I'm pretty sure it's not just a Vista problem because both Vista AND Leopard change the clock each time.

 

[nospamboz]

A known Boot Camp problem (feature?) regarding Microsoft
Windows has to do with the BIOS/hardware clock. Mac OS,
Linux, and any other reasonable operating system has the
hardware clock in UTC/GMT. Windows has it in local time.

If you Boot Camp into Windows, it will set the hardware clock
into local time. If you go back to Mac OS, that will interpret
the hardware clock (now local time) as UTC, perform the proper
time zone adjustment, and suddenly your clock is as many hours
wrong as your time zone is from UTC.

Though Windows has some patches/tweaks that is supposed to
disable its messing about with the hardware clock, they don't
work. It will always set the hardware clock to local time eventually.

Apple's solution to the problem is to have both Windows and Mac OS
synch time from the Internet, effectively ignoring the hardware
clock. That's not always an option if you're without Internet
access.

My own solution is to run Windows in UTC, choosing the London/
Greenwich time zone and disabling daylight saving. That way
Windows sets the hardware clock to UTC, like a good operating
system. I just have to remind myself when I'm operating in
Windows that the clock is UTC. I'm always doing UTC calculations
as part of my job, so for me that's no big deal.

 

[steveza]

I don't have this problem with the clock. I'm between Windows (2008) and OS X all day and I don't think it ever gets the time wrong. Obviously my virtual machines have time issues but that is the nature on VMs.

 

[debath]

Not just Vista

Hi,
I have recently used boot camp and installed windows xp professional on my machine. I am having the same problems with my time displays.

Windows fixes itself automatically (takes about ten seconds) but when I go back into Leopard, mac doesn't fix itself up. It's really just an annoyance but where I find it a problem is in my emails. If I don't remember to change the time back, all my emails have the wrong date/time associated with them.

Does anyone know if there's word as to who's taking responsibility for a fix (mac or windows) and if there will be one?

Thanks,
Debbie

 

[mikeheitz]

Mac issue

My research indicates this is a firmware issue on the MacBook Pro models (not sure about other Mac hardware). I found updated firmware for some older models, but nothing for the newer model I am using.

Running OSX 10.5 and Vista with Boot Camp. I am not fortunate enough to see Vista adjusting the time on it's own and this is not a problem we can just ignore as we are hoping to use Open Directory for Authentication, etc... time synchronization is the name of the game if my multi-OS users will be able to authenticate.

Has anyone seen any legitimate fixes from Mac on this?
Mike

 

[sabre364]

Anybody heard of more info on this problem?

I'm still having it nearly a year after we purchased these computers... I know nearly everyone else in the class who still uses vista (even occasionally) is having the clock jump 4 hours ahead...

 

[Guiyon]

Anybody heard of more info on this problem?

I'm still having it nearly a year after we purchased these computers... I know nearly everyone else in the class who still uses vista (even occasionally) is having the clock jump 4 hours ahead...

See the last post in this thread and/or make sure the AppleTime service is running on your Vista install.

 

[Gav Mack]

I had the annoying problem on the timeshifting between OSX and XP, though being in London it was only an hour. Vista still had the same problem because like XP and unlike OSX it set the time as local time unlike Leopard's UTC plus time correction.

Fortunately Windows 7 negates the need for the apple time service anymore because now you can set the time format to UTC instead of local time - hurrah!

EDIT- Vista now has the ability to set UTC with Service Pack 2.