Computers Date and Time – How Important is it to keep it Right?

Your computers date and time serves many functions and really needs to be kept right at all times.

What functions do the date and time serve?

Every time you create or save a file its given a time stamp, if the date or time are wrong it is saved with the wrong time stamp, now even if you correct the date and time any files saved before this period will still have the wrong date and time.

The implications for this stretch far beyond simple files, it also affects directories giving them the wrong creation time – email sent and received times will be wrong – calendar functions will give false dates and although appointments will be entered into the correct date any reminders will not work correctly.

In regards to the Windows system restore function, it may prove difficult to restore a system back to known times and dates

If your computer is encountering any issues it will be much harder to examine log information if the computer has or had the wrong date or time information when the issue started occurring

One of the biggest causes of Windows updates failing is the wrong date and time settings – usually accompanied by the error 0x80072F8F

If you find your computers date and time is frequently being lost or resetting it could be an issue with the computers CMOS battery, this battery stores the computers date and time, plus other CMOS information while a computer is turned off. Read more here about CMOS problems and changing CMOS batteries.

This article was put together as a basic guide to show how much our computers need to have accurate date and time information, there are many more reasons to make sure the date and time are accurate, but the list above should hopefully provide reason enough.
 
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