time.windows.com | Tech Off

Andy H

Hey

Has anyone else noticed lately not being able to synch with windows.time.com ? i dont know why but every single computer in my network at home is unable to synch with windows time servers yet they have done so in the past. I have not changed the setup of any of the comps nor have i changed any firewall settings etc. The only thing i can think is that a windows update has broken the functionality or with the USA moving to daylight savings time early that has broken something. I will have a look tomorrow at works domain and see if that has been able to synch.

The odd thing is ive been able to synch 2 of my xp machines with uk.pool.ntp.org but my server 2003 boxs refuse to synch with any time servers. Another odd thing ive just noticed is under the internet tab it says "windows has never attempted to synchronize with an internet time server"

Is anyone else in the UK seeing this ? can microsoft confirm that there is a problem here ?

Thanks Smiley

Andy H

infact checking through event viewer for both servers the last valid time stamp from time.windows.com was on the 09/03/2007. Since then it has failed on each subsequent attemp to synch (this is a windows server 2003 enterprise running sp2) so the fact its been doing this before i installed sp2 is some relief. So why cant i get both servers to accept any other time source ? Perplexed

Matthew van Eerde
AKA Maurits

W3bbo reported this earlier. NTP works better the closer you are to the server, so sending time-sync packets across the pond is iffy.

Andy H

Hi Matthew

The funny thing is ive been running the xp installations for 3 years and the server 2003 installations for 2 years and both the xp and server 2003 installs had not had a problem synching with time.windows.com up until the beginning of march (checked through event viewer to find last decent ntp stamp).

These are machines which have been running 24/7 more or less (certainly the servers have been running constantly apart from the odd reboot for updates), and i just find it odd that now the xp machines can only synch with other time servers (time-a.nist.gov , time-b.nist.gov and uk.pool.ntp.org) and the server 2003 boxs refise to synch with any time servers.

I firmly belive a recent windows update or USA moving to DST early has caused a problem with time.windows.com. Im just suprised no one else has noticed this (admiteddly its not one of thos things you check unless your looking through event viewer) but it just seems odd that time.windows.com no longer works and in windows xp and server 2003 the default internet tab says "windows has never attempted to synchronize...... " ??

John Galt

We just ran into this (I've already reported it to MS with no response... We have to have the time on the machines at least close for our software).

Of 100 client computers audited 100 of the machines had not synchronized since the US daylight savings time patch was released.
Of those 100, all of them that installed the patch in the middle of the night as part of an auto-update, had their date/times off by exactly a day.

This is on different networks, different installs of Windows, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2003 Servers, different IT departments, different routers etc. so it isn't anything BUT Windows causing the issue.

The only way to get it to work again is to run this script:

net stop w32time
w32tm /unregister [ignore error message]
w32tm /unregister [enter a second time]
w32tm /register
reg add hklm\system\currentcontrolset\services\w32time\parameters\ /v NtpServer /t reg_sz /d time.nist.gov /f
net start w32time
w32tm /resync

And then restart.

time.windows.com doesn't work at all no matter what you do. The others don't work unless you run the script above to reset the Windows Time Service.

MS really really really needs to fix this. Some of these computers are out enough that SSL won't work any more amoung other encryption issues....

And how it's gone this long without anyone at MS noticing or doing anything about it boggles the mind....

Matthew van Eerde
AKA Maurits

Gah... I hate DST...

I'll try to find someone internal who can answer to this.

CannotResolveSymbol
Microsoft: Who do you want to execute today?

I can't synchronize with time.windows.com anymore either. I get this error (if you feel so inclined to include it):

My time and time zone are correct... it looks like time.windows.com just isn't working anymore (I can sync with the other servers on the list just fine). Also, I'm in the US, so network latency shoudn't be an issue (plus, this isn't the error you get when that happens).

Matthew van Eerde
AKA Maurits

The peer's stratum is less than the host's stratum??? That's weird. You're the peer, time.windows.com is the host... the way NTP is supposed to work is that there are certain "stratum-1" time servers that are directly connected to an authoritative time source like an atomic clock or a GPS; any machine that syncs to these stratum-1 servers are considered stratum-2 machines; any machine that syncs to those is a stratum-3 machine... and so on, and so forth.

If time.windows.com is higher stratus than your machine, something's very odd.

CannotResolveSymbol
Microsoft: Who do you want to execute today?

Matthew van Eerde wrote:

The peer's stratum is less than the host's stratum??? That's weird. You're the peer, time.windows.com is the host... the way NTP is supposed to work is that there are certain "stratum-1" time servers that are directly connected to an authoritative time source like an atomic clock or a GPS; any machine that syncs to these stratum-1 servers are considered stratum-2 machines; any machine that syncs to those is a stratum-3 machine... and so on, and so forth.

If time.windows.com is higher stratus than your machine, something's very odd.

After looking at it in Wireshark, I think I see why. Time.windows.com is saying that its stratum is 0 (Unspecified or unavailable). A working time server (I synced to time-b.nist.gov) is stratum 1. This also may be of interest:

Reference Clock ID: NULL
Reference Clock Update Time: Feb 23, 2007 18:18:47.0627 UTC

And this friendly little error, indicated in the flags byte of the NTP reply (don't see why Windows doesn't show this as the error rather than the one it does):

11.. .... = Leap Indicator: alarm condition (clock not synchronized) (3)

It should appear that time.windows.com is completely dead, no longer syncronizing with any reference clock. Yikes! As opposed to a working clock (time-b.nist.gov):

Reference Clock ID: NIST dialup modem service
Reference Clock Update Time: Apr 14, 2007 22:21:09.2982 UTC

If it helps anyone who might try to fix it, the IP I'm getting for time.windows.com is 207.46.232.182.

(Wireshark's such a cool program)

John Galt

This was likely done intentionally becasue there likely was no way to fix the time server in time to handle DST changes for North America properly, so someone said "ok, let's just disable the sucker and no one will notice!"

um.... right...

Andy H

well i thought i was going nuts but i checked every pc on works setup all 300 of them and none of them can synch with time.windows.com they all give this error message

http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/6042/time1nk3.jpg

this definately needs escalating as something is up !!! the ip im getting for windows time server is 207.46.197.32

What i am concerned is why i cant get any of my servers to synch with other time sources ? jeez what a mess Perplexed

Andy H

well i dont know what happened but i just managed to get my server synched with time-a.nist.gov but time.windows.com is definately dead

Matthew van Eerde
AKA Maurits

We've found a problem and fixed it. Can someone verify whether it works now?

AndyC

Nope, still doesn't work here - "The time sample was rejected because: The peer's stratum is less than the host's stratum"- Vista Business

Matthew van Eerde
AKA Maurits

AndyC wrote:
Nope, still doesn't work here - "The time sample was rejected because: The peer's stratum is less than the host's stratum"- Vista Business

Hmm... there's still hope. We updated the DNS entry for time.windows.com recently (like, a few minutes ago...) - could you flush the cache and retry, or retry after the TTL has expired?

EDIT: TTL is 3600 seconds... squish.net/dnscheck is reporting 207.46.130.100 as the IP for time.windows.com

philraz

From Qld Australia still no sync available after dns flush

time-b.nist.gov does work
but time.windows.com and time.nist.gov do not

CannotResolveSymbol
Microsoft: Who do you want to execute today?

Nope... they're still not updating properly. Same error in Windows and the NTP reply looks the same:

Internet Protocol, Src: 207.46.130.100 (207.46.130.100), Dst: 10.227.10.44 (10.227.10.44)
Network Time Protocol
Flags: 0xdc
11.. .... = Leap Indicator: alarm condition (clock not synchronized) (3)
Peer Clock Stratum: unspecified or unavailable (0)
Reference Clock ID: NULL
Reference Clock Update Time: Apr 3, 2007 17:00:27.2667 UTC
Originate Time Stamp: Apr 19, 2007 04:17:21.3438 UTC

This is with the new server, if the IP address given by Matthew is the correct one.

Dude111

Hello everyone Smiley

I just noticed tonight my browser was unable to connect to "clock.via.net" as well as any of the others in the list (I have 6 in the list) so i tried the one i found on this thread and it works!

time-a.nist.gov

I dunno whats going on but its a big pain!

Nice site here Smiley

EDIT:

Here is a list of other time servers

http://tf.nist.gov/service/time-servers.html