My Dell Vostro 1720 laptop's clock drifts when waking from standby mode (even by five minutes sometimes). This is really annoying and sometimes dangerous.
I tried decreasing the Windows time sync interval to four hours but that does not really help that much.
Can I make Windows synchronize time on every wakeup (and other related events)? Additionally, is there an equivalent of Linux's command to synchronize on demand – ntpdate?
Perhaps this problem has something to do with a faulty hardware component (a battery or something)?
I'm running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.
Best Answer
You might try the following command:
Execute it on an elevated shell to re-synchronize your computer clock with the NTP server.
You might run this command from task scheduler with proper permissions. This even allows you to define an event to execute the re-synchronization on every workstation unlock.
Well, it might be better to search for the real reason why the clock is drifting that much (btw. 5 minutes is not really meaningful without knowing the time spent in stand-by).
When the machine is off or in standby then the hardware clock is taking over. When the machine resumes Windows reads the RTC value and continues (so when on, then clock is somehow a "software-clock"). If it drifts when off, it's often a sign of a drained RTC/CMOS battery. Unfortunately it depends on your laptop on how easy/difficult it is to replace it.
As a battery is usually an inexpensive device I would recommend you to try a replacement. If it still does not help I would guess an inaccurate/defective Quartz or clock generator being the cause. Unfortunately this part is typically not replaceable.