"Anthony Spee (EPA)" <[log in to unmask]> 05/30/00 08:52PM

 > I have a HP Vectra VE (Celeron 366 Mhz with 32 MB of RAM) running
 > Windows95 loosing about 2 minutes daily on its PC clock.

It's been a while since I worked on PC clock problems, but if I remember
correctly the hardware motherboard clock is only used for keeping time
while the PC is off (and thus powered by the MB battery).  When the PC
boots, the operating system reads the PC clock and then keeps time via the
OS software System Timer Interrupt.  Loosing time *while the PC is running*
is most likely caused by software interfering with letting the System Timer
Interrupt software run.  Again, really stretching my recall, I seem to
remember that the System Timer Interrupt is the low man in the interrupt
priorities.  So some other program or hardware that may be getting a lot of
interrupts, causing the PC clock software to miss updating the time. Of
course the other problem could be an intermittent problem with the System
Timer Interrupt, but I've never seen this.

I welcome comments and corrections.....

Doug

                  Visit our website regularly for FAQs,
               articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more
                  http://nospin.com - http://nospin.org