Why is windows time service disabled in SBS2003?

[jstevens]

Greetings,

I happened to troubleshoot an issue where the workstations time became off from the PDC that it could not logon. Upon research with browstat view 1 I found there was no time server (TS). Dcdiag run on the SBS2003 DC reported windows time service was disabled and gave a failure as well as for intersite messenging service.

On workstations and other servers there were event log errors reporting w32tm no time sources could be found.

I enabled this service and it looks like all is well. Net time is not working and reporting the correct time.

Thinking to myself, why would someone disable this? I went and checked a few other SBS2003 servers and the windows time service on all of them were disabled. Why in SBS2k3 is this service disabled? Should it be disabled? Then what other functions in sbs does the network use for time synchronization?

I have not been able to find any Qarticles on this or other comments on the web as to why this is.

Thanks in advance,

Jason

 

[jstevens]

Opps, I should say, net time is now working.

 

[TechSoEasyMVP]

The Windows Time service gets disabled by a bug in the CEICW (Configure Email and Internet Connection Wizard) if you select the option to use a router instead of selecting direct broadband connection.

This bug was fixed with SBS SP1, which you really should install. See

http://sbsurl.com/sp1

for info on that.

Jeff
TechSoEasy

 

[jstevens]

Thanks for your reply but I do not believe this information applies to any server I have worked on.

SP1 has been applied to all the servers I looked at. So, SP1 does not re-enable the service if it supost to.

I do not recall ever running that wizard, unless it runs automatically. But from my experience only the server management console runs in startup, one does not have to run all of the setup steps.


Jason

 

[TechSoEasyMVP]

SP1 won't in and of itself reenable the time service, but it will stop it from getting disabled when you run the CEICW with a router selected.

The CEICW most certainly does not run by itself and I'm not sure where you got the idea that you don't have to run all of the setup steps, but the To-Do list is HALF of the installation procedure. Not using the wizards will ultimately result in multiple problems and lots of hours of troubleshooting.

On SBS you need to ALWAYS use the Wizards!

See

http://sbsurl.com/itpro

and

http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2004/06/24/8898.aspx

for more information.

Jeff
TechSoEasy