Re: Alternative clock display

Jim Thompson wrote: 
On Wed, 08 Jun 2005 04:10:44 GMT, Tim Hubberstey <bogus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

If you're running Windows 2000 (and probably XP), there is an NTP client built into the OS (called W32time, IIRC). All you need to do is enable it and point it at a server. 


All I can find on my Win2K system is w32time.dll

How do you use it?

Socketwatch queries multiple servers.  It's presently showing 11
active servers.

Sorry, I don't remember the exact process for setting it up. I'll tell you what I remember.

1. w32time.dll runs as a service named "Windows Time". In addition to syncing with a NTP server, it also figures out a fudge factor for your PC's clock and applies it to maintain accuracy between server queries. Find it in the Admin Tools -> Services tool and change the startup type to "Automatic".

2. Open a DOS box and type:
NET TIME /SETSNTP[:ntp server list]

You may need to reboot to have this take effect. If things are working, you should have registry entries something like this:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters]
"LocalNTP"=dword:00000000
"Period"="SpecialSkew"
"type"="NTP"
"ntpserver"="timelord.uregina.ca"
"Adj"=dword:0001873c
"msSkewPerDay"="603.0000"

There is a white paper on setting up the service on the Micro$oft website. I think I found it by searching for NTP or SNTP. There is also documentation in the Windows help system.

I was using the US Navy NTP server (TICK/TOCK...), but I found it to be very unreliable. It is possible (and not unreasonable) that it was filtering out-of-country requests so YMMV.

It was a bit of a pain to setup initially, but it has been chunking along without intervention for quite a while now.
--
Tim Hubberstey, P.Eng. . . . . . Hardware/Software Consulting Engineer
Marmot Engineering . . . . . . . VHDL, ASICs, FPGAs, embedded systems
Vancouver, BC, Canada . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.marmot-eng.com
.

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