At 10:18 AM 12/15/02 -0500, Kurt W. Zimmerman wrote: >Greetings all; > This subject might have been addressed before but I think it is > worth >mentioning again. I run a utility called Dimension 4. You can find it at >http://www.thinkman.com/dimension4/index.html .. Since your logging >software runs off the system clock, this utility keeps your system clock in >sync with a time standard available on the internet. One assumes that you >machine is on the internet (dialed up, DSL or cable) when operating. This >way, you know you are going to be only a few milliseconds off the time >standard. Now if everyone syncs their clock off a time standard we >wouldn't have any problems. Hope this helps.
Let me put in a plug for another piece of freeware, Automachron from oneguycoding.com. It does the same things as D4 and keeps a log of the corrections. The rest is a little off-topic, but may be of interest to people having trouble with time accuracy under Win98SE. I have been using Automachron to trouble-shoot a weird time-keeping problem on my new Win98 PC. It holds good stable time for 12-18 hours at a time, and then starts losing time. Even weirder, once the time loss begins, it grows for each interval thereafter. For example, here's a little slice from the Automachron log (last two columns are seconds and milliseconds per 15 minute interval: 10:23:29 AM~0 142 10:38:29 AM~0 305 10:53:29 AM~0 497 11:08:30 AM~0 909 11:23:31 AM~1 242 11:38:32 AM~1 453 11:53:34 AM~1 878 12:08:36 PM~2 325 12:23:39 PM~2 834 12:38:42 PM~3 241 12:53:46 PM~3 889 1:08:50 PM~4 541 1:23:55 PM~4 910 1:39:00 PM~5 434 1:54:07 PM~6 395 After several false starts -- blaming a new KVM switch, bios/OS incompatibility, etc. -- I did a test deleting everything from the background task manager except for explorer and systray. Bingo -- time is stable. Then I added back in my firewall (Zonealarm), and next my anti-virus (McAfee). Still stable. I intend to reinstate the background tasks one at a time until I find the one that throws it off. Automachron makes this job immeasurably easier! 73, Pete N4ZR Happy Holidays
