As the title says, my computer was loosing time, and would be off by as much as an hour or two. Completely unacceptable.
So what do I do? Let me tell you. A couple of registry edits, and task schedulers later, my computer should by syncing so often that it'll never lose a second again.
Normally, your windows PC (I'm assuming your running XP or later) syncs time with an internet server once a week. Apparently for me, this wasn't often enough. So first, how do we tell windows how frequently to schedule a time sync? The registry of course. If you don't know what the registry is and still want to make windows sync time more frequently, just follow these following steps exactly.
Registry Edit for increasing (or decreasing) the frequency with which windows syncs time:
- Click Start
- Click on "Run"
- type "regedit" (without quotes) and hit enter
- Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\w32time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
- Double click on "SpecialPollInterval" (if that doesn't exist, go to "Edit -> New -> DWORDS" and create a DWORD called SpecialPollInterval
- Click on the radio button "Decimal" and enter a value
- That is the frequency with which windows will sync time with an internet time server (in seconds). So if you enter a value of 1440 would be .4 hours and 14400 would be 4 hours.
But your not finished. You still want to setup a scheduled task to run often enough that to keep your time synced often.
Go to the control panel, go to task scheduler and make a new task.
When it asks you for a program, tell it to run w32tm.exe (click browse and go to c:\windows\system32)
In the command line for w32tm.exe add the following additions so your command line looks like this:
"c:\windows\system32\w32tm.exe /resync /rediscover"
That will force windows to resync time, regardless of previous errors. Then setup a schedule that runs this at Logon and after the computer has been idle for 5-30 minutes. Or run it whenever you think it good for your system and your available system resources. You can even tell the computer to "wake up" from standby to perform the sync.
ENJOY!
That's very interesting...and way beyond what I'd feel comfortable doing! :)