W32time service suddenly stopped working and refuses to start on one of my DCs

[Edward Ray]

If anyone knows how to decipher this issue, much appreciated.

C:\Documents and Settings\root>sc query w32time

SERVICE_NAME: w32time
TYPE : 20 WIN32_SHARE_PROCESS
STATE : 1 STOPPED
(NOT_STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE,
IGNORES_SHUTDOWN))
WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 126 (0x7e)
SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
CHECKPOINT : 0x0
WAIT_HINT : 0x0

C:\Documents and Settings\root>net start w32time
The Windows Time service is starting.
The Windows Time service could not be started.

A system error has occurred.

System error 126 has occurred.

The specified module could not be found.

[Louis Vitiello Jr.]

Greetings,

Try re-registering the w32time.dll file.
In a command prompt enter:
regsvr32 w32time.dll and press enter

Then type:
net time /setsntp:time.windows.com and press enter

Lastly, try restarting the service

[gary self]

Tried that stuff already, no change.

Demoted and reprmoted the DC, that seemed to do it.


I have re-registered the w32time.dll, set the local service account to have change system time rights, rebooted and still have not resolved the issue. The box is an application server (MQ Series) and the time will not synch up.
The only thing I have not done is defrag, not that I think is will resolve my issue however it is 29% fragmented with 57% file fragmentation

Any suggestions you may have would be greatly appreciated.

[neo [mvp outlook]]

When you say register w32time.dll, does this mean you did the following?

w32tm /unregister
w32tm /register

/neo

ps - I assumed your DCs are Windows 2003

[gary self]

Yes, I did that once. When I attempted to unregister I got an error saying access is denied. When I did the regserv32 /u I successfully unregistered. Then I used regsrv32 to register and was also sucessful. Still unable to start the time service

[gary self]

I notice a post in m.p.w.s.general mentioning they're having time problems
after applying windows updates today.

Can you confirm if you have applied any updates to your DC today?

I am not having the issues on my DC. This is a dedicated appplication server. I also have not applied SP1 to it either.

[romahan]

This is a domain controler that was upgraded from either windows 2000 or NT or both. It appears that the problem started after patching back in July of 2007. I noticed the problem while trying to resolve anothe issue. Some of the things I have corrected (but didn't help) was that the registry entries were pointing to c:\Windows\System32 when they should have pointed to c:\WINNT\system32\... I have not rebooted since correcting these entries, not sure if that would help or not. Any ideas??

[gary self]

I ran service pack 2 and the problem went away,

It seems as though the time service pre service pack 2 uses the NetSvc account to start the service. Service pack 2 uses the Local Service account. THe netsvc account was corrupt and could not be authenticated.

Bear in mind that when installing SP2 on W2K3 you will need a minimium of 770MB of space if you run SP2 from another drive and save the uninstall directory to another drive. If you save and run it all from the C drive you will nee 1.3GB minimium of space.

[DaGimp]

This was a result of the upgrade to Win2000.

During the upgrade the w32tm files were installed but the OS is still using the old NT time service. Active Directory will complain about this doing most tasks. For me it happened when trying to change the computer account to a new domain.

Remove the old time service and install the new.