Computers, at least ones that run a microsoft OS, do really badly at keeping time. You should try running a timeclock program and have the program regularly synch the computer time to an atomic clock. I have used WorldTime 6 for over a year and have had zero problems since the full release (after the beta version). It can be downloaded here: http://www.pawprint.net/wt/. Cheers, TRADERguy
It's the hardware, not Windows. Linux machines have the same problem. I re-sync mine every 30 mins which generally keeps PC time accurate to a few hundred msecs.
Thanks Tauvros. I really like this utility. I had a really big problem before with my clock sliding (a few minutes every 1/2 hour). I had found an atomic clock to re-sync from but I had to do it manually.
Historically, problems with clocks were related to hardware - specifically too many interrupts at a higher priority than the clock ticks in the OS. This was often caused by things like flakey serial ports, unterminated cables, etc. While I'm not sure this still applies in modern machine architectures, it would seem that you could start by making sure you don't have any dangling cables, turning off unused ports and device drivers, etc. I'm guessing that there's something in perfmon that will let you look at where the interrupts might be coming from.
For a long time Iâve been looking for an alarm that would play a song file of my designation, starting at low volume then slowly raising the volume level to a selected point over a short period of time (about a minute or so). I used to have a utility that did this but it no longer works as it was never updated by the vendor with the new OSs. It does not have to be free. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks to everyone who responded. Does anyone who uses the Dimension 4 product also use IB TWS? The reason I ask is because I have experienced in the past that when I synch the computer clock using the internet utility 'Date and time', it seems to do something to TWS and the pink grid comes up freezing the software. I also use Sierra Chart which time stamps data using the computer clock. This is the reason I would like it to be more accurate. I am curious to find out how quickly Dimension 4 can synch the time since it will probably cause Sierra Chart to crash if it is not able to access the computers clock. There may also be a problem if the computers clock runs fast and Sierra Chart records a price at a certain time, Dimension 4 synchs it to the proper time 5 seconds back and then Sierra Chart tries to record a print at a time earlier than the last print it has recorded. I believe that this may cause issues, if not a crash also. Just thinking out loud and hoping that someone may have gone through this before and be will willing to share their experience. Thanks many, D
You might look into how the system clock is adjusted. I don't know about Windows but on Linux there are a couple of different ways of syncing the system clock to a time server. The preferred way on a running system slews the clock so that time is always monotonically increasing. It does this in small increments to avoid upsetting running apps. So if system time is too fast it slows the clock down until correct. You might like to look into whether Windows has such a facility.