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MN
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January 26th, 2026 10:04
HAL error, the hardware real-time clock was not set
Dell support says I should ignore the Windows Event Viewer. Out of curiosity, here’s the following question about the real-time clock error message that appears regularly: What is the cause of this?
Dell Precision 3590
BIOS 1.19.1
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Posted July 21st, 2026 12:21
I just had this with a user's laptop (Pro 14 PB14250). I checked the LED status, and it showed 1 amber and 8 white which indicates Chipset “Catastrophic Error” signal has tripped. According to the Dell Support page the only way of fixing this is to replace the CPU (motherboard).
I wanted to check if there was any other way of fixing this and I removed the battery, press/held the power butting for over 30 seconds. (Hard Reboot).
I then powered the laptop back on and it loaded POST and I entered the BIOS where I was able to change the RTC. I then rebooted and the laptop loaded Windows and the user logged on. When the laptop loaded, I checked the event logs, and it showed the reported error. Hope this work round helps somewhat.
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Posted January 27th, 2026 08:18
Following the process described in this article resolved the error, even though the article states that it is not applicable to my Precision 3590.
After the reset please check all defaulted settings like:
- date and time
- power management,
- processor turbo mode,
- storage (AHCI/NvME)
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My Nickname
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Posted January 27th, 2026 20:32
The error has returned in the Event Viewer, so I’ll just ignore it (like all the others).
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