This is a strange one, I've never seen anything like it; the realtime clock doesn't tick while the computer's idle, only when you're watching it. Leave for 3 hours and it'll be 3 hours off. It still advances when it's off however, or the time would be far more incorrect than it is.
About all this could be, in my opinion at least, is a strange power-management bug, and installed chipset drivers downloaded from sony, to no avail.
I should probably note the operating system is Windows 7.
A few hours tech support with Sony has left them baffled. They want me to reformat the thing. I don't think I should need to do so for such a problem :wall:
Can you define idle? You later mention watching it.
To me, idle means no keyboard/mouse activity. Watching the screen is a passive activity, and I cannot think of any way (telekinesis) where the computer would 'know' you are watching it.
Also, is this a laptop or notebook (something battery powered), since it could be related to an energy setting.
Thank you for the link, hicksd8. I don't have speakers at work however so your youtube video just has me staring at a BIOS screen. (Aside, making a video to explain something that can probably be explained in 2000 characters of text? What waste :wall:) But it definitely doesn't look like the same problem since the date appears to be getting reset instead of freezing.
BIOS update sounds like a good idea, yes. Unfortunately none are available.
I doubt a virus has the magical power to affect a computer while it's not running.
Quite likely that when sleeping or suspended the RTC is dependent on the BIOS battery voltage for power, whereas, likely that when running on mains or laptop battery, voltage to RTC might well be a little higher.
Replace the tiny battery (CMOS battery) for time and bios maintenance - not the big battery for the whole box. Save your BIOS config BEFORE you replace the battery.
I don't know squat about Sony, but this happens on other boxes when the little backup battery goes South. Example: you kept the notebook in the closet for a year, and decided to start using it again.
I've seen lots of computers reset their time and date when the battery dies, but simply stopping...? That's a new one on me. The article doesn't mention this either -- it says "consistently wrong", and this clock is anything but consistent.
My money has to be on the BIOS battery. This runs the RTC when the machine isn't running and probably the voltage is too low to run the clock. Changing this battery has to be the first move.