This is more for informational purposes than any troubleshooting.
Refind alters bios clock when Using USB 3.0 Card.
On a 7 year old PC, I have windows 10, and Kubuntu Studio installed on 2 separate SSDs.
I ran out of USB ports, and so bought a USB 3.0 card. Also one of the USB ports, on the motherboard , I accidentally fried.
I changed out the CMOS battery, and that did not resolve the issue.
I then removed the USB drive that had Refind, and in the UEFI, set to boot to windows, made sure the clock was correct.
Booted into windows, then shut down.
Powered on, went into the BIOS and clock was fine.
I then did the same thing with my Linux drive as steps 1-3.
I then inserted the Refind USB drive into the USB 3.0 card, and set the UEFI to boot from the drive, and then shut down. Started the computer up, and bios clock was off again.
I plugged the Refind USB drive directly into the bios for the mother board’s USB port, change the bios clock to the correct time and rebooted. Then I shut the computer down, Turned the computer on, and everything was fine.
I did look on the manufactures site for the card that adds more USB 3.0 ports for drivers and firmware and everything is up to date. I may look again, but at this point it is not needed.
It’s simply because Windows and Linux treat the firmware clock differently. This happens since ever. A little bit of googling would have helped to understand it and not make such weird movie in your head
Celticwarrior is correct. Dual booting Windows and Linux will result in different hardware clock settings being applied. This is fixable via that Ask Ubuntu link. This is a well know issue.
That is most probably what changed your RTC, because, by default Linux, or systemd-timesyncd and chronyd, for that matter, expect the RTC to be in UTC (Universal coordinated time), wheres Windows expects it to be in local time — including DST daylight saving time — for whatever ill-conceived reason. Both Windows and Linux set the RTC as part of their timekeeping duties and all kinds of funny situations can arise when dual booting like that; e.g. the logging system alerting you to the fact that there are entries from the future. See this solution which shows hot to fix Windows:
And yes, Windows is the OS in need of fixing; there is a reason, probably a myriad of reasons even, why UTC is a thing in air travel, for instance. One can always add or subtract the timezone offset, but the reference clock needs to be in UTC.
So apparently it was Refind that was altering my bios clock which I find odd. I pulled it, and am now just booting linux. I have always wanted a dedicated linux box, and dedicated windows box, and Now I have them. I am going to keep my windows 10 drive around for a bit, just in case. At the end of this year I will just wipe it, and repurpose it.
The PC itself seems to be changing the clock. I do not know how or why. I updated the BIOS and installed a new CMOS battery, and the clock changes after I shut the PC off, and turn it back on. I have to leave it off for a couple of hours for this to happen.
This is outside the scope of support these forums are meant to provide. But if anyone has any ideas, that would be great. The BIOS is UEFI.
Looking on line if the CMOS battery, and updating the BIOS do not work, then the motherboard needs to be replaced which, sucks cause I am out of work and unemployed.
I double checked the CMOS battery installation, and it is installed correctly. I did not have this problem with the BIOS clock being off, until I started dual booting.
If it’s by minutes, up to 30, you may have a problem. Otherwise, if by an exact hour or hours (in rare cases by exactly 1/2 hour), it’s the situation we already explained to you. And no, it’s no rEFInd.
I was pulling stuff out of my computer to just try to figure out what and where the problem lay. I did a command from a link to a different forum. So I will see if that fixes it. If not, then I will just live with it for now. The computer works, it is just annoying.
I had it set in the bios to turn on at 7am. And it would turn on at random times. Which led to all of this.
This doesn’t answer the question. And I have a feeling that you’re still set in your flawed way of thinking and for whatever reason unable to accept this is a well-known and thoroughly documented situation when dual-booting. The following are just a few results of the first of too many pages of Google results:
You should stop just alluding to things you have done without the details. What exactly have you done? And how off is your clock? Does it reset to 1-1-1970 after a few hours? If so, it’s a battery issue, no matter how hard you’ve checked; perhaps the “new” one is well past its sell-by date. There could also be corrosion on the contact surfaces, perhaps caused by a leaky cell previously occupying that space.
It it’s off by an exact multiple of an (half) hour, it’s a timezone issue caused by Windows storing/expecting it in local time, whereas Linux wants and sets UTC.
If it’s off by a few minutes, the realtime clock (RTC) is either fast or slow; those aren’t your Swiss watch when it comes to precision, highly temperature dependent — warm: clock fast; cold: clock slow.
— for whatever ill-conceived reason. Both Windows and Linux set the RTC as part of their timekeeping duties and all kinds of funny situations can arise when dual booting like that; e.g. the logging system alerting you to the fact that there are entries from the future. See this solution which shows hot to fix Windows: