Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Windows Internet Time Synchronizing

This is topic Windows Internet Time Synchronizing in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 07-04-2007, 12:02 PM:

Not too sure if many of you know but it appears that the Internet Time Synchronizing feature is no longer working.

This applies to both windows XP and Vista, (all versions).

It may be worth checking to see if you are affected, I know this is the case in the UK.

You can easily change the checking site in XP.;...

Double click the clock, right side of task bar.
Click on Internet Time tab.

You may see an error message
'An error occured while windows was synchronizing with (server name)' if so.....

Where it says Sever you should try another site by clicking on the drop down menu or, for the UK, type in 'uk.pool.ntp.org' Then click on Update Now.

It's strange that this has not been fixed by an automatic update....

Regards

Posted by Jennifer Pan (Member # 2035) on 07-04-2007, 12:34 PM:

Slightly off topic:

How to Prepare for Daylight Saving Time

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 07-04-2007, 12:42 PM:

Hi Jennifer,

I've checked your link but it's not the same problem.

The Internet Time synchronizing no longer works at all at the standard setting when windows is installed. Check it and see for yourself.

The address I've supplied is fine for the UK and should work elsewhere but there may be a better one for the US.

As I say I know this affects the UK and I was just wondering if it's the same elsewhere?

Regards.

Posted by Jennifer Pan (Member # 2035) on 07-04-2007, 01:23 PM:

I updated and "time.windows.com" works fine for me.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 07-04-2007, 01:27 PM:

It just worked fine for me, too. The last I knew, Yorkshire was part of the UK, but I'm sure a separatist movement exists somewhere. Maybe they'll plant exploding ferrets in the homes of incomers (note to self - work on my Yorkshire dialect! Having been born and brought up in Wimbledon and only moved here aged 27, the 'southern wuss' accent is a dead giveaway...).

Ken - do you have a firewall which is blocking whatever process or application does the updating? For the record, the computer I've just updated successfully runs XP Pro with the Windows firewall completely disabled, but with the firewall component of Iolo System Mechanic 7 running. Failing that, might your router's firmware or your ISP be blocking access to time.windows.com for some reason?

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 07-04-2007, 01:28 PM:

Hi again,

thanks for trying.... it well be a UK problem.

I read it in a computer mag this week and tried it myself and on all my systems, two XP and two Vista it was the same.

Be interesting to hear from others if they have, don't have the problem.

Regards.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 07-04-2007, 01:30 PM:

Are all four of your computers connected to the Internet through the same router and/or ISP?

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 07-04-2007, 01:49 PM:

Hi again Leo

Just looked back at the mag article, Personal Computer World, August 2007, Vol 30, No 9.

It states that 'It turns out the the two default servers - time.windows.com and time.nist.gov - are no longer useable, at least for Europe.

So you are definatly within Europe..... but so am I!

Not sure whats going on here, but it's clearly a known issue and nothing to do with my setup.

Regards.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 07-04-2007, 02:21 PM:

I did notice that my laptop wasn't syncing at home the other day, but thought it was probably just a temporary glitch, and didn't think any more about it. This was only in Windows; it was fine in Mac OS X. Haven't used a computer at home much for the last couple of weeks, dure to building work in progress.

At work we don't use the Windows time servers; we have two of our own, running on Linux boxes which also do a few other things, like DHCP. These sync to two non-Microsoft servers, one at Red-Hat and one at Janet, (Joint Academic Network), if I remember correctly. Varoius non-Windows things like switches, routers, some printers etc., and the top level Windows domain controllers sync to these, the child domain controllers sync to the top level ones, and the servers and workstations sync to the domain controllers of the domain they are in, so we wouldn't see the problem at work. I'll try again at home, and see what happens.

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 07-04-2007, 02:30 PM:

Hi Stephen,

What I find interesting is that if it is 'real' problem why no update has been isuued. After all it is very important that computers have their time correctly set.

If the bios battery were to fail and the time and date be set to some default date a few years back then some software would cease to function correctly. Setting the time back after may not resolve such problems. The same would apply to a date some years in advance.

So whilst it may not seem to be a major problem it has potential to be very damageing to your software.

Regards.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 07-04-2007, 06:27 PM:

Ken,

I was having the same problem a few weeks ago. I fixed it by changing the time server. The "Internet Time" tab of the "Date & Time Properties" box is where I changed it. I searched around the Internet for a server that worked. You can probably find a close one at this Microsoft support page.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-04-2007, 06:48 PM:

The last it automatically updated was 07/02/2007. I just now told it to update and it worked fine...07/04/2007.

I use the "time-a.nist.gov" server.

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 07-04-2007, 07:29 PM:

I tried all nine servers offered by Windows XP and all failed to synchronize, each with the message "An error occurred while Windows was attempting to synchronize with [name of server.]"

When I return to the clock set box, the error message is replaced with the following:

"Windows has never attempted to synchronize with an internet time server."

Go figure... [Confused]

Posted by Ken McFall (Member # 845) on 07-04-2007, 07:47 PM:

Hi George,

use the site I'd posted earlier and all will be fine.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-05-2007, 04:04 PM:

I got an error message as well, but then tried it again and it returned a successful message, so I am with Gerard....Go figure. But nothing surprises me with Windows; I have know Windows to give outright lies in their error message boxes -- evil messages -- causing me to spend hours trying to figure out a problem based on an erronious message. You just can't always believe every message you get from Window.

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 07-05-2007, 08:18 PM:

I tried about 15 from the extensive worldwide Microsoft Windows list Mark linked, including some in NYC, DC, USNavy etc., and none of them work. Maybe it's my DSL connection, or firewall.
It used to work, but I give up and will synchronize manually from now on.