Invalid Security Certificate. BIOS Date Changed
Posted on February 8, 2012
A friend called me a few days ago with an issue with logging in to his yahoo mail account on his new Windows 7 computer. He really could not explain what was happening other than he can go online and surf the web, but he just could not log in to get his mail. He also noticed that AVG atni-virus was not updating and giving an error about the clock. Seemed like a simple fix, just update windows time. He tried that and it that failed no matter which time server he selected.
When I arrived the computer was working fine. I did not see anything out of the norm. Until he tried to log in to his yahoo mail. Internet Explore started an infinite redirect loop at the yahoo log in page. The page just flash as the page redirected onto itself. Final I hit the stop button in the browser and the page displayed your browser did not redirect you to the proper page please click here. When I clicked the redirect link I got an invalid security certificate. I thought how or why would Yahoo have let their certificate expire.
The next step was to check things out in Google chrome or Firefox. Neither where installed, so I went to Google to down load the Chrome, everything worked until the download was suppose to start. I got nothing. Tried to download Firefox with the same results.
The next thing I checked was for a blown capacitor, so I opened up the box and all the capacitors looked fine. Once I put the computer back together I went in to the BIOS. Check the time and the time was dead on. Then I saw the problem, the time was correct but the BIOS time was set to 2080. I thought that was really strange, since I have received an email a few days earlier and the date sent was 2080. The date and time is a very important component to your computer.
I change the BIOS date to 2012 and booted Windows 7. At that point everyone was happy. No more invalid certificate errors and Google chrome and Firefox both downloaded as expected. AVG updated and we ran a full scan and it came up clean. On a side note you should always have more than one web browser installed. Even if you only use Internet Explorer, having an additional browser will allow you test the other browser.
If you have seen this issue please let leave me a comment. I would be interested in knowing if there might be some issues with newer BIOS jumping to year 2080.
Yes, the same happened to me minutes ago, but in a Windows 10. Day and mouth are correct, so it takes a while to realize the problem is the year of 2080. No virus, no malware founded too. My system is crashing from time to time (not sure why, probably it is some power deficiency or instability), and the problem occurred after a crash. I guess that time it messed with BIOS date. Thanks for you report, it puts my mind at ease.
yea, happen to me this morning. i re-imaged hp xw6600, and everything booted fine.
try to surf the web, and got hit with invalid certificate. took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on. then i notice that the date was set to year 2080. manually adjusted the time and date. reboot, checked the bios to make sure it took. everything work as expected.
this issue also happens to me, but about once a month. often times more. havent found much anywhere on the web about it. does anyone know root cause?
The BIOS clock can only be changed in a few ways. This will depend on the hardware and the BIOS. The simplest explanation is the the system is losing power and the button battery on the motherboard is dead. Typically it will reset the time to past like 1969. If the time is changed to the future it could be many things.
What date does the computer reset to? Is it always the same date, if not is it chronological or progresses in one direction?