24/04
2009
2009
Just noticed that all the computer clocks on a network were 5 minutes out. Went to the server (Windows Server 2008 Standard), to check the internet time synchronisation only to find that the usual Internet time tab on the clock/date control panel was completely missing. I didn’t bother investigating exactly why this is, but found the following solution.
w32tm /config /syncfromflags:MANUAL /manualpeerlist:time.nist.gov
w32tm /config /update
Obviously you can use your preferred time server instead of time.nist.gov, but run these two commands and wait a few minutes, and you should see your clock correct itself. The process will show ‘time-service’ events in the system event log to confirm your changes.
My preferred time server is uk.pool.ntp.org
This works on server 2003 as well!
“Internet time tab on the clock/date control panel was completely missing” Yep, know how that happened. The server joined the domain. Welcome to the weird and wonderful world or Microsoft. :p When any computer joins a domain, the Internet Time tab is removed. This will happen for ANY version of windows. The thought was that when the client logs on, the time will be sync’ed to the domain time server. But in the real world, I don’t see people logging off everyday. I’m still researching what registry switch setting makes this happen. I use http://www.karenware.com Karen’s Time Sync for my server until I can reload the operating system.