clock

[twontdick]

Why does my clock lose time. Few minutes a week.

 

[Ronc]

Why does my clock lose time. Few minutes a week.

Keeping accurate time is not easy. It can be done by spending lots of money
(as in the case of my $2000 stainless watch) or by synchronizing. My cable
box gets it's time from the cable, my kitchen clock syncs to the low
frequency radio waves from the atomic clock in Boulder, CO, and most
inexpensive plug-in clocks count the 60 Hz waveform from the power company
(which is supposed to keep the average number of cycles at 60 per second so
it can continue to be used for this purpose). Laptop computers, since they
are battery powered, must rely on the internet for synchronization. I
installed a special time-sync program on my old Win98 machine. XP and Vista
have this feature built in but it may need some tweaking to get it to work
right: Make sure you are using a time server that actually works (it may not
be the default or even on the current list of servers you can choose from).
Make sure the firewall(s) between the server and your clock program are not
blocking the ports/protocols used by the time-sync program. In my case, I
managed to get Vista's built-in Internet time function working with internet
access via WWAN (Sprint) or WiFi but not when access is via the Ethernet
port. (Still haven't solved this yet. Tech support duplicated the problem
on their own system at their own location but have no fix for it yet.)

 

[Ronc]

Why does my clock lose time. Few minutes a week.

Also, I forgot to mention, the default poll interval of once a week is not
often enough. I used a registry tweak to change mine to once per hour.

 

[Guest]

Ronc,
I don't like the idea of the clock setting once a week either.
Where/how/what is the registry tweak that will change how often the internet
clock will reset? Thanks.

 

[Ronc]

Search the registry for "specialpollinterval". It should show up in 3
places, whose path names differ at one level (CurrentControlSet vs.
ControlSet001 vs. ControlSet003). Modify the decimal value, not the hex
value, to the number of seconds you want. I used 3600. I think that if you
change the CurrentControlSet value the other two will follow along
automagically.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Ronc... it worked like a charm.

Search the registry for "specialpollinterval". It should show up in 3
places, whose path names differ at one level (CurrentControlSet vs.
ControlSet001 vs. ControlSet003). Modify the decimal value, not the hex
value, to the number of seconds you want. I used 3600. I think that if you
change the CurrentControlSet value the other two will follow along
automagically.

 

[Michael Walraven]

Just a data point.

On my Vista Home Premium, with no modifications to timing as far as I know.

The polling time is 24 hours (1 Day). I say that because if I manualy update
the time via time.nist.gov at
11/3/2007 at 12:38 AM, it reports that : Next synchronization: 11/4/2007 at
12:38 AM.

Michael