My computer has a small problem .... one that makes absolutely no sense to me ...

The system clock is a tad bit ... fast. In fact, the second hand on the clock in windows looks like a fan blade. The system clock is advancing at roughly 3.7x the normal speed. Everything that's controlled by the system clock runs at 3.7x the normal speed. As I sit here writing this, the flash animations on the side of the page are going by too quickly to read.

The system is useable, but rather .... inconvenient, not to mention the fact that I'm rather creeped out.

Everything was fine, no problems. Then I turned off the computer, turned it back on a few hours later, and bam, a new fan on my screen where the clock used to be.

Does anyone know what's wrong? Or better yet, how to fix it? Has anyone even heard of a problem like this before?

Any modifications, hardware or software (including Windows update), just prior to this?

Are you running XP? Are you on broadband? If so, try to disable the "Automatically synchronize with an Internet Time Server" in the Date and Time properties and let us know what that does.

Oh, you haven't watched anything weird lately like "Clockwork Orange" or anything, have you?

What kind of power supply do you have? When I lived in Europe I used to have a similar problem but just the opposite, the clocks would run slow. Their power is 50Hz and in the U.S. it is 60Hz. Even though I could use a transformer to convert the voltage, the Hz would remain the same.

If your PS is designed for 50Hz, running at 60Hz would cause your clock to speed up.

No changes of any kind. Problem sort of solved, and now I'm more confused than ever.

Perhaps you saw my thread in the videocard forum yesterday . Computer couldn't boot into any program with a GUI. I unplugged one of the two CD drives, computer worked again.

A few hours later, the clock started running fast. I finally just unplugged the other CD drive, and now it runs normally. WTF!?!? I'm assuming it's a problem with my motherboard (Abit IC7-MAX3). I'm looking at some Abit forums trying to find some answers. It's always acted weird when I had both SATA and PATA drives connected at the same time, but nothing like this. Also, I did absolutely nothing to induce this sudden bout of craziness.

Oh well, we'll see. Thanks for your suggestions.

Sounds to me like one of your IDE channels is going bad or has already gone bad then. I don't know for certain but it makes sense judging by what you said about the CD drive.

Yup. It would seem that although my motherboard will recognize multiple SATA and PATA drives simulteneously, it doesn't particularly like to. If I have an SATA drive hooked up, I can only have two IDE drives hooked up, and they have to be on the same cable, plugged into the second IDE plug.

The MAX3 looked awesome at first .... but several unforeseen problems have arisen since it came out. I guess this might be another one (of course, chances are it's just my one board).


ABIT


(I've wanted to use that smiley for a while)

Have you updated your bios recently ? mabie that would fix your pata and sata problem which coudl mabei fix your clock and fix all your other micalanious problems.