bios clock

mikergj

mikergj

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Looking for some advice here, I have googled this and came up with two different answers.

Every time I turn on my laptop the time has changed, I checked my bios clock and it is running extremely fast, about a minute every second.

The two answers I googled was firstly a virus and secondly a flat or fading bios battery. Some say that if every time you turn on your computer the time has reset to 00:01 then its the battery, if the time is setting to any random time then its a virus.

I have scanned my computer for viruses but nothing comes up. I am presently leaning strongly towards the bios battery being the problem here.

Any advice or thoughts would be greatly received. My lap top is a Dell inspiron 1545.
 
I would hazard a guess its the bios battery.
Sometimes a nightmare to change on certain laptop mobo's as some are integrated into the circuitry unlike desktops where you can pop the battery out the holder.

Worth a try though as the batteries a sweetie money to buy.
 
Thanks Stupar , I think that's the way forward , I need to know though if when changing the battery is there a chance of losing all your files, etc. I would imagine you have to back every thing up before changing it, or is it just a case of pop old one out and fit new one and away you go.
 
You're ok, just change it.
 
mikergj said:
Thanks Stupar , I think that's the way forward , I need to know though if when changing the battery is there a chance of losing all your files, etc. I would imagine you have to back every thing up before changing it, or is it just a case of pop old one out and fit new one and away you go.
Click to expand...

No, changing the battery doesn't affect any files on the disk drive. I can't remember if it resets the BIOS though. It may be a good idea to write down the settings before you change it.
 
If you can get to the bios battery, then it will be safe to change it. (On my laptop, it is soldered on to two wires, and rattling around the case covered in some heat-shrink, I can't change it).
However, generally, if the battery is running low, the frequency of the clock will skip-beats, so it will be slow, rather than fast. (Generally the clocks have battery backed 32.7KHz crystals.)
What I have seen affect crystals in the past, is dust shorting to ground the connections.
Try attaching a hoover to the exhaust area of the laptop (with the laptop off), if changing the battery [can't be done or] doesn't help.

The only 'risk' to the machine of disconnecting the bios battery, would be if you are using an encrypted bios (you would know if you were), or that the bios might forget how to access the disk. This type of setting would be found under 'IDE' settings or similar in the bios. (if it is SATA, it is unlikely that you would have this issue)
 
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So from what you say coldpenguin this may not be the battery, as my clock is not missing a beat or running slow. Its running as if its taken some kind of sport enhancing drug, 100 mile an hour. Very strange.
 
I've changed a couple of batteries and never had a problem with losing any information or any bios settings. All I had to do was reset the time and date afterwards and everything ran smoothly.
As far as I am aware, in a normal PC / laptop, the battery is only there to keep the correct time and date when its switched off, not to keep any informatiom held in bios as thats non volatile memory so won't lose its information on loss of power.
 
interesting.. ive never seen the bios clock speeding up before.

google does have a few similar cases where it was infact the bios battery being dead/dying.

you might lose custom changes youve made to the bios settings but thats all.
 
As the battery dies its output voltage will drop or fluctuate and that may well be causing the RTC oscillator to drift. BIOS is largely non-volatile memory these days so you shouldn't lose settings.
 
+1 that's been said here, BIOS virus's are extremely rare/non existent these days, its likely to be a battery issue.
 
Give the battery a shot first, if you have had it more than a year, then it is worth a shot (in theory, they should last 10+ years given the draw of RTCs, but sometimes they are not shipped with the best quality batteries).
If a change doesn't work, give it a vacuum. If that doesn't work.... is it under warranty? Get a backup of the system first if Dell want you to send it back.
 
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