# CMOS Losing Time

## Yarui

I have been having an issue with my Gentoo server. I haven't used it for a few months and it never had issues before, but when I turned it on a few days ago for the first time in 3 months, I had to set the CMOS clock. After unplugging it and then restarting it a few minutes later it lost the time again. It keeps time fine when it is plugged in, but not when it is unplugged. I thought the motherboard must have needed a new battery, but I have already replaced the battery and it is still doing the same thing. Does anyone know of any other possible causes for this problem?

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## mikegpitt

Just a thought, but when you replaced the battery, did you happen to loosen a connection or pull a wire from a jumper?  If it continues to be a problem, you might want to use ntpd to keep the time correct on your server.

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## Yarui

I had wondered the same thing and haven't yet checked it out.  It is a shuttle so it's kind of a pain to open up and I figured I would ask if anyone had any ideas so that I could look at a few things at once instead of having to repeatedly open it to try out different stuff.  The problem isn't really that I need my server to have proper time, the real problem is that the computer won't boot when this comes up.  I have to set the clock every time it happens so that it will be able to boot properly.  It wouldn't really be a big deal except I don't have a monitor on it while it is running, I just ssh into it.  So when it hits this problem and won't fully boot, I have to get a monitor over to it so that I can fix it.

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## NeddySeagoon

Yarui,

Its losing the time and the CMOS settings. It can only be the CMOS battery

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## Yarui

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> Yarui,
> 
> Its losing the time and the CMOS settings. It can only be the CMOS battery

 

That's what I thought.  I was absolutely sure that replacing the battery would resolve the issue, but it didn't.  I suppose the battery may just not be making a good connection with the contacts.

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## Manko10

Have you tried cleaning the contacts and maybe pressing the battery into its case?

Are you also sure of having a fully charged CR2032 button cell battery?

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## Yarui

 *Manko10 wrote:*   

> Have you tried cleaning the contacts and maybe pressing the battery into its case?
> 
> Are you also sure of having a fully charged CR2032 button cell battery?

 

Yes, I bought a new CR2032 battery, so no problems there.  I haven't cleaned the contacts, though, so I should probably give that a try.

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## Odysseus

 *Yarui wrote:*   

>  *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   Yarui,
> 
> Its losing the time and the CMOS settings. It can only be the CMOS battery 
> 
> That's what I thought.  I was absolutely sure that replacing the battery would resolve the issue, but it didn't.  I suppose the battery may just not be making a good connection with the contacts.

 

Sometimes these batteries are old and have lost their freshness even before sale. Depending on the popularity of the battery in question it may have sat on the shelf for years before you purchased it. I like to buy CMOS batteries from major companies like Duracell or Energizer, because they put freshness dates on the packaging.

Do as the others have mentioned, make sure the contacts are clean. A good quality contact cleaner will evaporate and leave no residue. If this doesn't work, try replacing the battery again, with one known to be within its freshness date. It may cost you a little more, but it will be money well spent. Then if you still have the issue, you will know that you probably have a short somewhere on the motherboard causing it.

I hope this helps,

CiaoLast edited by Odysseus on Mon Sep 27, 2010 6:38 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## Manko10

You could also buy these batteries in a bike shop since most tachometers have the same type of batteries therefore they should be fresh.

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## mikegpitt

 *Yarui wrote:*   

> It is a shuttle so it's kind of a pain to open up

 I used to be a bog fan of shuttle's a few years ago, but my opinion has changed over time.  I've seen issues where the internals are just not soldered on well, and have a tendency to break off.  This happened to both the motherboard SATA connectors for this one machine I own, making it unusable.

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## Odysseus

 *mikegpitt wrote:*   

>  *Yarui wrote:*   It is a shuttle so it's kind of a pain to open up I used to be a bog fan of shuttle's a few years ago, but my opinion has changed over time.  I've seen issues where the internals are just not soldered on well, and have a tendency to break off.  This happened to both the motherboard SATA connectors for this one machine I own, making it unusable.

 

The last Shuttle I had was way back in th '90s. It was one of the first with many overclocking features supporting the Pentium. It was well reviewed at the time at Toms and Anandtech, both mentioned how it would be upgradeable to the "new" Pentium MMX CPUs which were due out shortly thereafter. So I purchased based on the recommendation. Bad mistake. The Pentium MMX CPUs came out and shuttle never released a BIOS update to support them. The only really good thing about that board other than the overclocking options was that it was more stable than the PcChips board I had previously (a total piece of garbage).

To make a long story short, the next board I bought was an Asus and have never looked back! They're more expensive, but you get what you pay for. Rock solid stability, and frequent BIOS updates. There's a reason so many companies have them (Asus) make their boards. Every machine I've built since then either for myself or for friends has featured an Asus board. In fact, this Dell laptop I'm typing this on now, is the only non-Asus computer I've owned since then.

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## Cyker

This is a semi-common thing on older lower quality mobos; Both my Asus A8N32 SLI and A8N SLI Premium have increasingly poor clock-skew when powered off.

Apparently it can be due to degrading capacitors and bad solder joints that are cracking due to thermal stress.

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## Odysseus

 *Cyker wrote:*   

> This is a semi-common thing on older lower quality mobos; Both my Asus A8N32 SLI and A8N SLI Premium have increasingly poor clock-skew when powered off.
> 
> Apparently it can be due to degrading capacitors and bad solder joints that are cracking due to thermal stress.

 

Cyker there's a big difference between clock-skew in which time is being kept a a slightly different pace, and what the OP seems to be experiencing which is loosing time altogether whenever unplugged.

BTW, I'm saddened to find through your post that Asus' quality has now slipped as well. Who can you trust now when even the big reputable names are no longer producing quality?

Ciao

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## Cyker

I thought the OP's problem was that he's loosing time when the system is off, which suggests the CMOS clock is running slow; I don't think they mean that every time they turn the computer off and on, they loose an hour or two...

I think Asus have gotten better; The A8N and A8N32 were the last of the Socket 939 mobos and had lots of new tech but were very poorly made (Asus in particular seem to use really shite epoxy for their heatsinks) and I think my ones were made during that faulty capacitor period  :Sad: )

Gigabyte have gotten a lot better; I remember when their motherboards were as bad as Foxconn or PC Chips (May they burn in silicon hell!) but now they're on par with Asus. They've basically replaced Abit as Asus' main rival  :Wink: 

DFI also make some nice mobos, and I liked EPoX before they folded and got eaten. Asrock's quality has improved a lot since they got eaten,but they're pretty no-frills 'boards.

Right now I'm liking Tyan - They specialize in expensive no-frills server 'boards but I've yet to have a problem with one. Alas they are mostly unsuitable for desktop systems tho' (PCIe x16 positioning is shockingly bad on the last one I installed; You wouldn't be able put a full-length PCIe x16 graphics card in as it would collide with one of the heat sinks!  :Laughing:  To be fair, it's probably intended for some ludicrous RAID or 10GigE card  :Laughing: )

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## Odysseus

Trying not to hijack this thread, but Tyan has always had an outstanding reputation for making expensive conservative server boards, as you said, not really for the desktop or for workstations. Also in that category would be Supermicro, which is another outstanding though conservative server board maker but with hardly any presence on the desktop. I guess I got lucky and haven't owned an Asus during this "bad" stretch. I read where many companies had boards that were failing due to faulty caps but I was lucky and was never affected.

It could be because I held on to my old rig for so many years as I felt no need to upgrade. My old machine was based upon an Asus Tusl-2 motherboard. I ran an unlocked engineering sample Pentium III 1.4ghz overclocked to 2.3ghz in a vapo-chill case. The CPU stayed at a consistent -35C. It ran circles around most P-IVs with nearly double the clock-speed. 

It had 3 major problems however, it was limited to only 512megs of RAM, had AGP not PCIE, and it sounded like a huge deep freezer in my bedroom 24-7. When I got married, the first thing  my wife made me do was dump it. Which was a shame as it served me well and deserved a better fate.

OK hijacking over! lol

Ciao

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## salahx

Actually, it might be one other thing. There's a kernel option, PM_DEBUG, and a sysfs file 

/sys/power/pm_trace , that, when enable, corrupts the clock as a side-effect (see Documentation/power/s2ram.txt for the details on this). It could be this process is cause the CMOS checksum to fail and erase itself.

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## rawbeefman

Hey, did you ever figure this one out?  I have a shuttle too.  I am using it as a server, and I get the same issue everytime I reboot.  I have to go down and manually push the f1 key to continue at bios.  It is really frustrating.

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