PC 'clock' not keeping time??

[Apache]

Somewhat OT I know but I only just noticed that the last couple of days, when I shut down the PC the clock hasn't kept time when I boot up again.

Am I correct in assuming there is some kind of rechargeable battery buried in the gubbins somewhere??

[Hpt. Lisse]

Yup. And it's "time" for a new one ;^)

It's easy to find on your motherboard, round silver battery... it's not covered or anything.

[Schrullenhaft]

Most motherboards have a "coin cell" battery on the motherboard that is replaceable. Often the first feature to "go" is time keeping. Eventually it may lose the CMOS settings which hold your BIOS setup parameters. With the automatic detection capabilities of most BIOSes these days many users may not notice much of a difference if these settings were lost unless they've made unique settings in the BIOS setup.

Typcially (though you'll want to check for yourself) most motherboards use a CR2032 battery.

[Apache]

Many thanks. Prsume I don't need to 'do' anything special before replacing (e.g. will the act of taking out the battery cause the rest of it to 'die' - BIOS set up etc). I did go into BIOS when I booted up last and was going to take note of the settings, there were an awful lot though :-(

[Schrullenhaft]

It's possible that you may already be running on 'default' settings, I'm not sure. Removing the battery should actually clear all the settings to their defaults, which may or may not be a problem for you. Most computers will probably run fine on their default settings, sometimes with a slight loss in performance if they were using higher performance settings in their CMOS/BIOS setup.