W32Time Error Fix

[Saphire]

I am just posting this small fix that can help many to deal with W32Time ERror. I had faced this error a number of time. All you need is to add the right combination of entries and it will start working. You can find this kind of errors in event logs and performance report. The commands that I had mentioned below worked for me and I thought to share it to help those who are dealing with the same kind of problem.

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:"timeserver/timeserver" /syncfromflags:MANUAL
w32tm /config /update
net stop w32time
net start w32time
w32tm /resync /nowait

[Beckinsale]

Thanks for that script. I was also facing problem with some servers. They are not at all updating time. I have to reconfigure settings each and every day. The scrip helped and it worked properly. It is quiet not complicated to configure timeserver but sometime it becomes annoying to work on it. There must be some automated kind of tool that can give a regular feature of working on the same.

[lynnep]

I noticed that my computer's time was 10 min slow, tried to sync it, sync didn't work, tried to start Windows Time Service but couldn't, so I went investigating W32Time. I got it to work by changing it from peer mode to client mode, re-registering it and restarting it but then noticed that many registry values for W32Time did not match the published defaults. Any ideas why they wouldn't? Is this dangerous?

My machine is running the latest updated version of XP.

Here's my reference for defaults:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...mes_tools_uhlp

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Here's what I found, keys that don't match published defaults:

SpikeWatchPeriod
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config
The default value on domain members is 900. The default value on stand-alone clients and workstations is 900. (Mine is 90)

EventLogFlags
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
Default is 0x1 reachability changes (Mine is 0)

InputProvider
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpServer
Default it Yes 1 (Mine is 0)

LargePhaseOffset
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config
The default value on domain members is 50000000. The default value on stand-alone clients and servers is 50000000. (Mine is 1280000)

LargeSampleSkew
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
The default value on domain members is 3. (I don't have any value.)

MaxClockRate
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config
The default value for stand-alone clients and servers is 155860. (Mine is 156640.)

NtpServer
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters
Default is time.windows.com,0x1. I added an entry for time.nist.gov,0x8 that appears to be working. I'd like to remove the time.windows.com,0x1 entry.
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Also, there is no domain controller, and no group policy, but there are a bunch of additional registry flags that look like I there is, like:

CrossSiteSyncFlags
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient

and a few others.

I am very uncertain about this whole business. Is this a security hole? Should I change these keys back to the defaults? Should I replace win32time.dll with a factory version? Most importantly, who or what is messing with my time services?