3 ms·

I shut down my desktop every night. No reason to keep it on. I can save my work, all my tabs persist, it’s fine. My main complaint is that my PC seems to have

I shut down my desktop every night. No reason to keep it on. I can save my work, all my tabs persist, it’s fine. My main complaint is that my PC seems to have crazy clock drift? And windows just doesn’t seem to care? It doesn’t actually cause problems but I will check and see that it’s off by >5 seconds and that just shouldn’t ever happen. My phone is always accurate to <0.05s and same in Linux. Idk why windows isn’t.

fsckboy 3mo ago
>No reason to keep it on. any reason not to simply let it sleep?
- foobarchu 3mo ago
  Not OP, but the sleep and hibernate states on my desktop are pretty finicky and can't truly be trusted. I'd rather know everything shut down properly than risk it, especially since the thing boots in seconds anyway, and I have to input the encryption password anyway.
  - snailmailman 3mo ago
    Yeah, i just simply don't trust the sleep functionality to not be buggy. I walk away with processes running a decent amount of the time and its unclear to me what things can prevent sleep from triggering and what cant. If i do need to have something persist overnight I use hibernate. And I haven't encountered issues with that. But ive had enough issues with sleep states on my laptops that i just dont bother on my desktop. The monitor goes to sleep if i walk away but the PC doesn't sleep.
  - KennyBlanken 3mo ago
    > sleep and hibernate states on my desktop are pretty finicky That is not normal... Also, if you're on Windows, unless you disabled Fast Boot, you're not actually shutting it down. It's logging you out and suspending to disk.
    - foobarchu 3mo ago
      It's not unusual to have sleep state issues on Linux, which is what it runs (an Arch derivative). Could be some faulty hardware somewhere, but it's not a concerning enough issue to spend money replacing things for a machine that gets used for personal projects and video games.
    - snailmailman 3mo ago
      With fast boot, it is a partial-hibernate (as you said, it is basically logging out then hibernating). But also, you are shutting the device down. You can hibernate a laptop and take the battery out. The device is off. Thats the difference between sleep and hibernate. Sleep still uses power. Hibernate is a true power off, with instructions for the PC to load ram from disk on next boot. IME hibernate often works more reliably, because sleep states can be buggy, and hibernate just powers off the device. Hibernate is slower though, and can have its own issues (often related to disk encryption) Sleep being buggy is a mystery to me, but has happened on nearly every laptop i've owned. I think too many things can wake slept device or prevent sleep. Leading to "I closed my laptop and put it in my bag. Then it woke up and got hot and span the fans until it died". But ive also had many instances where some apps are more buggy after waking from sleep (ive had issues like video playback failing after wake, presumably related to hardware video decode), or certain peripherals don't handle it well, and windows reshuffles monitors or changes a microphone since the "default" was briefly gone, or a mouse/keyboard doesnt wake the device from sleep when they should, etc. Phones and tablets seem to handle low power states really well, but ive literally never had a good experience with it on a laptop or desktop.
- Barrin92 3mo ago
  doesn't clear up your ram. One big security reason for regular reboots is that you simply get rid of any potential non-persistent crap on your machine. Also performance obviously, with a full shutdown you get back to a known, clean state. Worth noting on Windows the restart function only does that if you hold Shift or have Fast Startup disabled.
annzabelle 3mo ago
Tangent about clock drift: my phone (Pixel 9) drifts by about 5-10 minutes a day when in airplane mode. This doesn't sound like it would be a huge deal, but I do a lot of wilderness backpacking and very long flights where I'm keeping it in airplane mode for 36+ hours to save battery, and then at the end I need an accurate time to make the next flight or meet a ride. Not really sure what to do about it because there is no official support for Pixels in this country.
- y1n0 3mo ago
  Not judging, but I'm curious why you don't wear a watch?
  - annzabelle 3mo ago
    I do typically, but I haven't always been the best at managing watch charge. It's a coros fitness watch and I've killed it on some hikes by using the GPS too much. Overall not a huge problem, but it is annoying.
    - vasco 3mo ago
      There's many cheap watches with effectively infinite battery. But no gps
    - vanburen 3mo ago
      Something like the Casio GW-M5610-1ER would be good option. Charges from solar and can get time updates over Multiband 6 if your region has coverage.
DANmode 3mo ago
Replace the CMOS battery yet?
- snailmailman 3mo ago
  I'm confident this will mostly fix my problem but its such a minor thing its not worth disassembling my PC for. But I will likely swap it out next time I disassemble it for any other reason. It seems to me like this problem can be entirely solved in software if the OS more frequently resynced the clock. I checked just now and it last did a sync 2 days ago? I dont think my PC bios even saves sub-second accuracy, and IMO it should be resyncing after every boot. The CMOS battery on my ~10yr old linux laptop is also dead, and its a complete non-issue there. The bios complains occasionally and shows me the time is wrong and then i boot in and the OS fixes the clock immediately.
DedlySnek 3mo ago
I'm in the same boat. My work laptop is shut down everyday once I finish my work.

fsckboy 3mo ago

>No reason to keep it on. any reason not to simply let it sleep?

foobarchu 3mo ago
Not OP, but the sleep and hibernate states on my desktop are pretty finicky and can't truly be trusted. I'd rather know everything shut down properly than risk it, especially since the thing boots in seconds anyway, and I have to input the encryption password anyway.
- snailmailman 3mo ago
  Yeah, i just simply don't trust the sleep functionality to not be buggy. I walk away with processes running a decent amount of the time and its unclear to me what things can prevent sleep from triggering and what cant. If i do need to have something persist overnight I use hibernate. And I haven't encountered issues with that. But ive had enough issues with sleep states on my laptops that i just dont bother on my desktop. The monitor goes to sleep if i walk away but the PC doesn't sleep.
- KennyBlanken 3mo ago
  > sleep and hibernate states on my desktop are pretty finicky That is not normal... Also, if you're on Windows, unless you disabled Fast Boot, you're not actually shutting it down. It's logging you out and suspending to disk.
  - foobarchu 3mo ago
    It's not unusual to have sleep state issues on Linux, which is what it runs (an Arch derivative). Could be some faulty hardware somewhere, but it's not a concerning enough issue to spend money replacing things for a machine that gets used for personal projects and video games.
  - snailmailman 3mo ago
    With fast boot, it is a partial-hibernate (as you said, it is basically logging out then hibernating). But also, you are shutting the device down. You can hibernate a laptop and take the battery out. The device is off. Thats the difference between sleep and hibernate. Sleep still uses power. Hibernate is a true power off, with instructions for the PC to load ram from disk on next boot. IME hibernate often works more reliably, because sleep states can be buggy, and hibernate just powers off the device. Hibernate is slower though, and can have its own issues (often related to disk encryption) Sleep being buggy is a mystery to me, but has happened on nearly every laptop i've owned. I think too many things can wake slept device or prevent sleep. Leading to "I closed my laptop and put it in my bag. Then it woke up and got hot and span the fans until it died". But ive also had many instances where some apps are more buggy after waking from sleep (ive had issues like video playback failing after wake, presumably related to hardware video decode), or certain peripherals don't handle it well, and windows reshuffles monitors or changes a microphone since the "default" was briefly gone, or a mouse/keyboard doesnt wake the device from sleep when they should, etc. Phones and tablets seem to handle low power states really well, but ive literally never had a good experience with it on a laptop or desktop.
Barrin92 3mo ago
doesn't clear up your ram. One big security reason for regular reboots is that you simply get rid of any potential non-persistent crap on your machine. Also performance obviously, with a full shutdown you get back to a known, clean state. Worth noting on Windows the restart function only does that if you hold Shift or have Fast Startup disabled.

annzabelle 3mo ago

Tangent about clock drift: my phone (Pixel 9) drifts by about 5-10 minutes a day when in airplane mode. This doesn't sound like it would be a huge deal, but I do a lot of wilderness backpacking and very long flights where I'm keeping it in airplane mode for 36+ hours to save battery, and then at the end I need an accurate time to make the next flight or meet a ride. Not really sure what to do about it because there is no official support for Pixels in this country.

y1n0 3mo ago
Not judging, but I'm curious why you don't wear a watch?
- annzabelle 3mo ago
  I do typically, but I haven't always been the best at managing watch charge. It's a coros fitness watch and I've killed it on some hikes by using the GPS too much. Overall not a huge problem, but it is annoying.
  - vasco 3mo ago
    There's many cheap watches with effectively infinite battery. But no gps
  - vanburen 3mo ago
    Something like the Casio GW-M5610-1ER would be good option. Charges from solar and can get time updates over Multiband 6 if your region has coverage.

DANmode 3mo ago

Replace the CMOS battery yet?

snailmailman 3mo ago
I'm confident this will mostly fix my problem but its such a minor thing its not worth disassembling my PC for. But I will likely swap it out next time I disassemble it for any other reason. It seems to me like this problem can be entirely solved in software if the OS more frequently resynced the clock. I checked just now and it last did a sync 2 days ago? I dont think my PC bios even saves sub-second accuracy, and IMO it should be resyncing after every boot. The CMOS battery on my ~10yr old linux laptop is also dead, and its a complete non-issue there. The bios complains occasionally and shows me the time is wrong and then i boot in and the OS fixes the clock immediately.

DedlySnek 3mo ago

I'm in the same boat. My work laptop is shut down everyday once I finish my work.