Date changes after connecting w/dialup

I have recently experience something truly bizarre with my daughter's PC. It is a Compaq 667 MHz, 256 Mb RAM, running XP Pro. I recently upgraded to XP Pro from Win 98. I didn't notice any problems until I went to update Norton A/V. I was told that my subscription had expired on 5/18/2004. I looked at the system date and it was February 7, 2036.

I changed the time and date back to current, rebooted and the date was the same. Rebooted and changed the BIOS date and everything was fine. Long story short, whenever I connect via dialup, as soon as the connection is established, the hard drive gets hit, and about 10 seconds later, the date changes.

Now, I understand the significance of this date as it relates to the internet clock, but I can't make the connection between it and what is happening on my machine. I have run a complete virus scan (after getting the latest updates) and run SpyBot S&D. Both did not find anything. Is it possible that my ISP is pushing this date down to my machine? I contacted them and they said the problem has nothing to do with them.

Anyone have any idea on this one?

Thanks

 

Have you tried disabling Internet Time Synchronization under Date and Time in Control Panel?

 

Yes, I forgot to mention that. I renamed timedate.cpl to timedate.old so the O/S couldn't find it to use it. XP did warn me when I renamed it that "critical system files had been altered" and wanted to restore but I ignored and continued. Still got the same results.

 

I finally was able to resolve this. The problem was caused by a Compaq-specific application called SyncClk.exe. I was able to track it down to an ini file called cpqcld.ini. There were entries for several applications to launch when a network/internet connection is established. I commented out these entries and the problem went away. I am assuming that the return from whatever server was called by SyncClk must return a 0 or null. This is then interpreted as February 7, 2036 (date the internet clock rolls over to 0). Just one more reason to not get a Compaq, or if you already have one, remove all their proprietary software. It usually causes more problems than it helps.