Computer Clock Problem (yes i did a search)

Hello jdmblkctr,

Welcome to the Dell Community Forum,

I would suggest to check your time in the Bios (F2 during post) to verify If your cmos battery is the problem. If your system is losing time in the setup screen then your battery is the problem, If not this would be software related. Hope that this helps you.

Thanks,

The Bios on the system, only stores time when the operating system isn't running.  The bios retains information during a power down cycle, not continually, and between reboots.  Therefore some software on your machine is affecting a battery low power condition, which in turn is keeping the clock from updating properly.. Its like its treating the clock program as an low priority program during a battery power state.  There is definately some software running that gets affected when you are running off battery power.  Did you maybe install some power program, or tweak utility that monitors your power settings.. Something is on that machine that could be intercepting the power status, and certain programs don't run because the machine is on a low power.. Sometimes sound card will run low power, or not at all during battery, but kick back on during external power, something like that.  I would try updating the machine to the latest bios, to see if that does anything.. but other than that, you may have a trojan program thats doing something crazy once the battery kicks on.  And for a machine to lose a whole hour..more or less, for an hour loss of external power.. that's a program, not the machine, that is causing it.