Wrong Date

[Tefler]

I had a weird thing on my computer today. Everywhere I went on Firefox was an 'untrusted site'. No wonder, when the computer's calendar said it was the year 102014! All of the certificates were out of date. On top of that, nothing would close down properly and everything was slower than a snail's pace.
Is there a virus that could have reset the computer's clock and calendar? I certainly hadn't done so!
I've run a virus check and all seems sound.

[Buenchico]

If it happens just once it's probably due to a freak event (such as solar radiation hitting the BIOS memory, where the time information is stored).

If it keeps happening you need to change the BIOS battery (also known as the CMOS Battery)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao866I9XpTo

[Tefler]

The computer's running Windows 8.1 (was 8.0, but it decided to update to .1 about a week ago - without a by your leave!)
When it starts up, there's no message, just a welcome screen in which I have to put a password.

[HansUrbancka]

If the Computer's clock and calender are 'out-of-date' it follows that all Site Certificates are wrongly dated so far as your Computer is concerned. How old is your Computer.?

Hans.

[Tefler]

The computer is 17 months old. What concerned me, though, is that it wasn't that the clock was 'a bit fast': there was a '10' in front of the year, making it 102014.

[bibblebub]

This is not an explanation for what happened but have you set the date/time to synchronise with the internet (right click on the display on the taskbar and choose properties or you can do it from the control panel)? That way the clock should stay correct unless something turns that setting off.

As regards Windows automatically updating, there is another control panel setting for changing that to doing no updates or informing you that some are available but leaving it up to you to do them manually.

Incidentally if you hadn't done the upgrade to the very latest 8.1 update by June 10th then Microsoft in their infinite wisdom have decided that you will get no further updates (including security fixes) whatsoever.

[Tefler]

Useful stuff, thanks, Bibblebub. Will check settings. I'm happy to have the upgrade - but because it did it at a peak time, it cost money. Had there been a warning, I could have run the upgrade outside the peak times- I didn't know the cut-off date, though, so might not have done it in time.

[bibblebub]

There's a few months until the next significant update of Windows (Windows 8.1 update 2) which is likely to be on September 9th.