NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, January 2005
What Time Is It? Set Your PC Clock
by Ira Wilsker,
APCUG BOD and columnist for the Examiner, Beaumont, TX


I get a lot of emails that have an incorrect time stamp on them, placed their by their computers that have an incorrect time and date. I was asked on my radio show, “So what’s the big deal about having a wrong time and date on my computer?”

There are several reasons for having a correct time and date on your computer. One reason is that if your computer has an incorrect date and time, and you send email with that incorrect time, it may not be noticed by the recipient and remain unread, or it may be filtered out by some spam filters. I sort my incoming email by date so I will always see the newest messages first. If the sender has a clock that is set “slow”, then that email will not be near the top of my list, and if the clock is too slow, then I may not see the message at all because it may show up as an old, out of date message. Since many spammers purposely set the date and time either far in advance, or far in the past, so that their spam email always appears first or last on an email list, many of the spam filters delete emails that are extremely off in their dates and times.

Another reason to have a correct date and time is to better enable searches on your own computer. Almost all versions of Windows have had as a search function “date and time” to find files created, accessed, or modified in a specific time frame. If downloaded or shared files are received with a correct time, and the computer clock is significantly off, there may be discrepancies making some file searches difficult.

Many professionals bill their clients based on time, and those that use their computers to bill the time need an accurate time on their computers in order to bill accurately. There may also be legal ramifications in having a correct or incorrect time on the computer. I recently did a forensic analysis on a computer involved in a legal case, and there was a question explicitly about when certain things were done with the computer. The defendant in the case was a professional engineer, and billed clients for his computer time, using a utility expressly for that purpose. He used a program that frequently checked his computer clock against the official government time (http://www.time.gov), and logged any differences, which were slight. Since his computer clock was accurate, always within a second during the period in question, there was evidence so strong in his favor that the case was dropped. If his computer clock had been significantly off, there may have been a strong case against him, as a key piece of defense evidence would have been missing.

There are several reasons for computer clocks not having the correct time. Some computer users never set their computer clock, similar to the flashing “12:00” on many VCRs. I have worked on computers that had the wrong time zone set, simply because the user never reset the time zone and clock after it was purchased, and still had the default time zone set by the manufacturer. Many computers lose time on their computer clocks due to a well documented interference with the clock from some “soft modems”, “controlerless” modems, or “WinModems” that sap processing power from the CPU chip while online. A symptom of this is sometimes a “jerky” cursor that does not move across the screen smoothly while online. Another reason for loosing time on a computer clock is a weak battery in the computer. Most users are unaware that there is a small battery in their computers, often a watch or calculator battery, which powers the CMOS chip while the computer is turned off. While some newer computers use a small rechargeable battery, which has a longer but still limited life, the typical computer battery may only last for a few years until it must be replaced. One necessary proviso is that the user should use one of several utilities to back up the CMOS data before replacing the battery, or the system defaults will be used. After replacing the battery it is almost always necessary to reset the clock.

There are several utilities that will automatically reset the clock with little or no user intervention. These range from integral Windows XP utilities, to freeware, and commercial software. XP has a free built-in time check utility that can transparently reset the computer clock. It can be found by clicking on control panel – date and time – internet time. Additional information is available by clicking on start – help – and entering the search term “time synchronization”. I recommend using the nist.time.gov link which will set the time to “official” time. The XP time utility may not function properly or give an incorrect time if the utility is blocked by a firewall, or if it is set to a local network time, which may also be inaccurate. The clock can also be set manually by double clicking on the clock and entering the time; just be sure that the time zone and daylight savings time are set correctly from the “time zone” tab.

I also use an excellent free utility to check my computer clock, AboutTime 4.8. It is available for download at http://www.arachnoid.com/abouttime, along with detailed instructions and trouble shooting. Personally, I have it set to the U.S. Naval Observatory time at tick.usno.navy.mil. I have found the Navy time server to be the most reliable connection.

Now you have no excuse for an incorrect computer clock.

There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author. The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you.

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