"SC Tom" wrote in message
...
I don't think that's correct about them recharging. And you may have had a
faulty battery in it to begin with- I also have my PC's on a power strip
(well, a UPS that I turn off when I shut down), and my battery is well
over 5 without a change.

SC Tom
Here is what I found on the Gateway site that had me thinking it was
"charging" which was a misunderstanding on my part. It was referring to the
life of the battery. According to this, my battery was right on the money--
it will last approximately three years if it isn't plugged in and seven if
it is. For $3.49 I think I will continue with the way I've been doing
things:

"The CR 2032 battery is a 3-volt, lithium, coin-cell battery with a rating
of 220 milliampere-hour (mAh). It provides power to a motherboard's
real-time clock (RTC) and BIOS memory. The battery enables the RTC to be
accurate to ±13 minutes per year at 78 degrees Fahrenheit, or 25 degrees
Celsius, with 3 volts applied.
On a motherboard, when the computer is plugged in, the standby current from
the power supply extends the battery's life. Its estimated lifetime is seven
years when the computer is plugged in to a power outlet and three years when
the computer is not."



"Annie Woughman" wrote in message
...
OK. $3.49 for a new battery later. I will let you know in the morning if
this solved the problem. One thing I did learn while I was reading about
my battery, these Lithium batteries are supposed to "recharge" themselves
if the computer is left plugged in when it is off. Well, at night when I
power everything down, I always turn the power strips off as an
additional protection against power surges if we happened to have a
lightening storm at night or when we are out of town. (Our area seems to
be vulnerable to brown-outs and power surges.) Sooo, that might be why
my battery didn't last so very long. This is one of our newer computers
and this is the first time I have ever had to replace a battery. The
average life is supposed to be about seven years. I've had this computer
less than three.

"Annie Woughman" wrote in message
...
On my Vista, now Win7 desktop I have had an ongoing problem with it
failing to keep the correct time. This happens at night when the
machine is turned off. In the morning I have to manually sync the
machine with internet time. When it was still a Vista machine I found a
registry fix that would have it automatically sync every four hours.
Now since the change to Win7, I find that this registry change is never
"saved." It is most annoying because this machine has a television
tuner so I use it regularly to record shows through the Media Center.
That doesn't work so very well if I forget to sync the machine in the
morning and the show I want recorded starts at 9:00 p.m. and my machine
still thinks it is 11:00 a.m.

Also, why is it just my desktop that does this and not either of my two
laptops? They are turned off 75% of the time but they always start up
with the correct time.

Does anyone know of a way to fix this, or an app that would make it
automatically do a time sync upon startup?