asked on

The time service has not synchronized the system time for 86400 seconds

weve had a couple of incidents where one of our servers time keeps going out of sync.
its usually about 15 minutes but thats enough to stop the server from being usable by the users... cant connect to any shares or printers on it etc

the Time Service event is

The time service has not synchronized the system time for 86400 seconds because none of the time service providers provided a usable time stamp. The time service will not update the local system time until it is able to synchronize with a time source. If the local system is configured to act as a time server for clients, it will stop advertising as a time source to clients. The time service will continue to retry and sync time with its time sources. Check system event log for other W32time events for more details. Run 'w32tm /resync' to force an instant time synchronization.

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the solution is simple... restart the windows time service

but does anybody know why this keeps happening?
is there anything specific i should check in our environment... something on the DC or the server itself?

let me know if you need any more information...

cheers

Seth Simmons

is the server that holds the PDC emulator role configured as an authoritative time server?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816042

Skyler Kincaid

You need to see what it is using to sync the time. You can run this command from command line to see what the configuration is:

w32tm /query /configuration

or w32tm /query /peers

You may need to manually enter the server for this server to sync with by running:

net stop w32time

w32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual /manualpeerlist: servername (mostly likely your Master DC)

w32tm /config /reliable:yes

net start w32time

w32tm /query /configuration (use this to verify the config of the new settings)

BakerSyd

ASKER

w32tm /query /peers shows the following.

i can confirm that the server.domain.com name is definitely correct.

C:\Users\user>w32tm /query /peers
#Peers: 1

Peer: server.domain.com
State: Active
Time Remaining: 726.2213575s
Mode: 3 (Client)
Stratum: 4 (secondary reference - syncd by (S)NTP)
PeerPoll Interval: 12 (4096s)
HostPoll Interval: 12 (4096s)

Skyler Kincaid

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555225

Once the W32Time service fails to locate a
domain controller, it will reduce its activity to location attempts every 16 hours until restarted. You’ll see
System event log messages to this effect, with Event ID 64, whenever the service is unable to locate a
domain controller for a long period of time.

Does the server lose connection to the DC at anytime? Are you sure that the DNS is set correctly on the server? Is that the error that you are getting? It sounds like a DNS problem to me.

BakerSyd

ASKER

i see no event ID 64 in the system event viewer.
no the server has not lost connection to the DC (that im aware off) the time error is the only problem that weve encountered

DNS is certainly setup correctly.. this server has been around for a while now and this has only started happening in the last couple of weeks.

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Skyler Kincaid

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BakerSyd

ASKER

good idea... ill setup logging and monitor the windows time service till it happens again... if it happens again.
so far the service has failed over the weekend... so might have to wait till next monday to see if it captures anything.

i will post back!

thanks for the idea

BakerSyd

ASKER

encountered no problems over the weekend with the server so i have nothing to say at the moment...

will monitor and post back once something happens.

Skyler Kincaid

Alright let us know!

BakerSyd

ASKER

the server hasnt had a problem since we setup monitoring on the time service.

i will close this for now and reopen / start a new thread it if happens again.

thanks for all your help!