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Kenneth Cochran
Asked: 2010-07-01 07:43:36 +0800 CST

Problem with time syncronization in client machine

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The company I work for still uses Windows 2000 Server for most, if not all of its infrastructure. I recently joined my Vista laptop to the domain and noticed the system clock jumped ahead by an hour. I know the cause of this is because the time is synchronized with the domain server (which has dst turned off, because no one could get the patch working correctly after the law change a few years ago). I turned dst off on my laptop so the time would be correct. The problem I'm having is that every few minutes I see the clock jump ahead again, only to jump back a few seconds later. This is causing problems with a few programs I have that use the system time to determine if files need to be updated.

Any ideas on how to fix this problem? If I haven't given enough information to troubleshoot with let me know and I try to fill in the missing details.

Update

As I mentioned above I don't have access to the PDC or any of the other servers (nor do I want to be held responsible for the results if something gets messed up). For the time being I'm going to turn dst on my laptop back on and change my clock setting to a different timezone and see how that works.

windows-server-2000 windows-vista time-synchronization

1 Answers

  1. Update the Windows 2000 Server machine to the current Daylight Saving Time rules and you'll be fine.

    You can use one of the older unofficial patches (which aren't really "patching" files-- they're just updating the registry). If you're in the US and using an English language version of Windows 2000 then you'll be fine (until the next update to DST in the US).

    The official Microsoft WayTM appears to include an automated fix tool that may take care of your needs (I haven't tried it). Otherwise, you're stuck making registry modifications by hand.

    We made some registry merges to take care of the few W2K Server machines we still had hanging around, but I don't have them handy to give to you.

    Edit:

    The only "fix" that won't involve computers being set to the wrong time zone is to update the Windows 2000 Server computer's time zone information. Anything else isn't really a "fix" and will leave you with a mixture of machines set to different time zones even though they're physically in the same time zone.

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