This is a brand new notebook HP Zbook 17 G2 with incorrect time. It was placed into use on 9/20/2015. Operating system is windows 7 professional. Over the past month and half I have used the time settings and have updated and changed from windows.com to nist.gov to nw.nist.gov to a.nist.gov to b.nist.gov. On each of these settings the computer loses time. With a 24 hour check it was off approximately 50 seconds. Recently I viewed http//time.is and it will display the seconds behind. The computer is under warranty for three years and has 2 years and 10 months remaining. The manufacturer did not offer to replace the customized computer. They offered to either replace the motherboard with a refurbished motherboard and replace the clock battery or just replace the clock battery. What methods are there to test the clock battery? What methods are there to test the time keeping functions of the motherboard?
how to evaluate a new notebook computer that displays incorrect time
- Thread starter zbook
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I personally would not want them to replace the motherboard with a refurbished board unless you were certain the remaining 2 years and 10 months of the warranty was still good.
I really don't see this being a clock battery issue. The RTC (real time clock) is just a counter and the BIOS software interprets and translates the "counts" into the date and time. When the clock battery is so weak it cannot keep the RTC running, you generally see the date and time be off by days, weeks or even years. It does not cause the counter to run consistently slow. So that, to me, would point to the RTC frequency being slightly off and not something you could fix by replacing the battery. Still, replacing the battery is typically pretty inexpensive and easy - once you gain access to it - and is worth trying, if up to it.
An alternative is to change how often the computer syncs to the nist time server. The default is every 604,800 seconds (1 week). I have mine set to 86400 (1 day). To see how to do this, scroll down to "Adjust Interval" here. These instructions were written for XP, but they are exactly the same for W7/W8/W10.
An HP technician replaced the RTC battery. The battery was was not a pop in and pop out metal battery. Instead it was enclosed in plastic and was attached the the motherboard by a wire and female connector. The HP technician attempted to pierce the plastic to record voltages but this did not appear to be accurate. The voltage of the new computer battery is not known and the voltage of the new replacement battery is not known. After the battery was replaced he reset the bios. The Http://time.is web site initially displayed 7 second delay. He then used command prompt and pinged yahoo and thought the delay may be related to the slow wifi connection in this new location. After going to the the computer clock time and then updating we were eventually able to get it to display exact time. When everything was complete he asked me to leave the unit unplugged and without the laptop battery for a while and then reinsert the laptop battery and check the Time.is - exact time, any time zone web site for any delay. This was approximately a 7 second or less delay for at least one hour. Then as the day progressed I noticed longer delays. Most of the delays over the next few days were under one minute. Some were over one minute. Each time the computer is placed in sleep mode and then awakened it seems to somehow refresh the time delay to a reduced delay (less than 7 seconds)
The HP support said that there is a crystal in the motherboard and that may somehow be defective. They did not have any method to test the motherboard time function and have offered to replace the motherboard with a refurbished one. The ZBook 17 notebook or mobile workstation is under 3 year on site warranty with 2 years and 10 months remaining. They stated that refurbished parts are better tested than new parts. I could ask them to replace the whole computer since the problem with the clock time was identified the month in use.
With the latest information after the CMOS RTC battery replacement, any thoughts on testing the motherboard or replacing the computer or the motherboard or any other steps?
The HP support said that there is a crystal in the motherboard and that may somehow be defective. They did not have any method to test the motherboard time function and have offered to replace the motherboard with a refurbished one. The ZBook 17 notebook or mobile workstation is under 3 year on site warranty with 2 years and 10 months remaining. They stated that refurbished parts are better tested than new parts. I could ask them to replace the whole computer since the problem with the clock time was identified the month in use.
With the latest information after the CMOS RTC battery replacement, any thoughts on testing the motherboard or replacing the computer or the motherboard or any other steps?
Something is wrong when a technician does not know the voltage of a new battery. And something is seriously wrong if a technician is telling you a clock is off by X number of seconds because the wifi is slow. Wifi is RF - radio frequency and RF travels at the speed of light - 186,000 miles per second. That is more than 7 times around the Earth in 1 second.
When someone says their wifi is slow, what that really means is the "intelligence" - that is the "data" being carried by that RF is coming in small chunks (narrow bandwidth). The date/time sent by nist is a very tiny chunk of data - a single 64-bit timestamp. That's 8 bytes of data! It does not take 7 seconds for 8 bytes of data traveling at the speed of light to get anywhere on Earth, let alone across a single wifi network.
If he pinged www.yahoo.com and the maximum "round trip times" exceeded 150ms, I would be shocked. Even today, "Black Monday" one of the busiest Internet days of the year, my maximum ping time to yahoo from my notebook (connected via wireless) with 3 ping sessions (and 4 pings per session) was 87ms, 114ms and 78ms.
It seems to me he just verified what I said earlier - that the RTC counter, which is controlled by an oscillator (it may be a crystal or pure electronic) is slightly off. THIS IS NORMAL!!!! It would cost too much to install clocks with atomic clock accuracy in each of our computers. And this is exactly why Windows is set by default, to re-sync with a nist atomic clock time server once a week.
My advice stands. If your time was "drifting" many minutes each day, then I would definitely say to have the board replaced - since they offered. But since we are talking seconds a day, then I recommend you do what I did and change the Internet time synchronization interval to 1 day using the instructions above. Or if really a stickler, 21,600 seconds (4 times/day). And if OCD anal about it, set it to 3,600 seconds.
When someone says their wifi is slow, what that really means is the "intelligence" - that is the "data" being carried by that RF is coming in small chunks (narrow bandwidth). The date/time sent by nist is a very tiny chunk of data - a single 64-bit timestamp. That's 8 bytes of data! It does not take 7 seconds for 8 bytes of data traveling at the speed of light to get anywhere on Earth, let alone across a single wifi network.
If he pinged www.yahoo.com and the maximum "round trip times" exceeded 150ms, I would be shocked. Even today, "Black Monday" one of the busiest Internet days of the year, my maximum ping time to yahoo from my notebook (connected via wireless) with 3 ping sessions (and 4 pings per session) was 87ms, 114ms and 78ms.
It seems to me he just verified what I said earlier - that the RTC counter, which is controlled by an oscillator (it may be a crystal or pure electronic) is slightly off. THIS IS NORMAL!!!! It would cost too much to install clocks with atomic clock accuracy in each of our computers. And this is exactly why Windows is set by default, to re-sync with a nist atomic clock time server once a week.
My advice stands. If your time was "drifting" many minutes each day, then I would definitely say to have the board replaced - since they offered. But since we are talking seconds a day, then I recommend you do what I did and change the Internet time synchronization interval to 1 day using the instructions above. Or if really a stickler, 21,600 seconds (4 times/day). And if OCD anal about it, set it to 3,600 seconds.
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