Weird system clock reset on dell inspiron

[Guest unperplex]

I suppose this is just a minor annoyance, but perhaps someone knows a simple fix. I've got a dell inspiron 8000 laptop, and my clock is about 4 hours off. Of course, I've set it to the correct time several times now, using drakclock and command line date.

 

Now here's the weird bit. I use an external monitor, and there's a key combination which switches the laptop between using its monitor, the external monitor, or both. And when I do that, the system clock reverts to being 4 hours off. I can't seem to get the changed time to "stick" without being reset.

 

And I can't even fix it by leaving the monitor setup as is. If I go away from the computer for a few minutes, both screens blank out (I guess this is the screen saver), and if I press a key or move the mouse, the screens "wake up", which has the same effect of resetting the clock.

 

When I say "reset," I don't mean that the time resets to some fixed time, it just falls back into it's misconfigured state of being 4 hours off.

 

Anyone encountered this before? Anyone have suggestions for fixing it, or even what I might be able to do to diagnose the problem?

[Steve Scrimpshire]

I don't know why changing monitors affects it, but I have a possible solution to the clock resetting. Open Mandrake Control Center and go to System and Time settings. You may have to temporarily change timezones and change back to get this option, so change your time zone and click apply. Change it back and when you see 'Hardware Clock set to GMT" uncheck that and click apply.

[Guest unperplex]

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

I gave this a try. When I changed the timezone, I got a little popup dialog that said "hardware clock set to GMT," and I clicked no. Actually I tried:

- correct the clock time, change timezone, change back, click "no" on hardware clock/GMT

- change timezone, correct the clock time, change timezone back, click "no" on hardware clock/GMT

- change timezone, change timezone back, correct the clock time, click "yes" on hardware clock/GMT

 

etc...but when I switched monitors, it still reset the clock back four hours, regardless of the permutation.

 

It's pretty baffling...what the heck could the monitor switch have to do with the clock? Other suggestions would be very much appreciated, and thanks again for the tip.