Excuse me, do you know what time it is?

[Technokrat]

Does anybody know what keeps/controls the time for the domain?

I used to think it was the PDC, but that's not the case. Our domain time is 10 minutes off of the correct time. I've set the PDC to the correct time, but it eventually switches back to the incorrect time, and trickles the incorrect time back down to the client machines.

 

[patrick118]

IS it possible you let it configure with a time server on the internet? This is not default so you had to do it yourself.

 

[Technokrat]

Please say more. Where/how is this done? Our servers are configured at our corporate headquarters and then shipped to our site for installation.

 

[Castor66]

From another thread which I posted the answer:

The simplest way is to configure one of your servers (or a firewall/router) to be the primary time source for your systems. Ensure it is running an NTP service - that's why I prefer cisco routers to do this sort of thing - they are core and generally have huge uptime.

Once that is done you can set the time service to query that time server with the following registry entries:

Under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\w32time\Parameters set the following entries:

type REG_SZ NTP
LocalNTP REG_DWORD 0x0 (0)
ntpserver REG_SZ <ip address of ntp server>
Period REG_DWORD 0x18 (24) <- this will set the time every hour.

That's about it. You can turn on logging to event log if you wish but it's not necessary.