System clock synchronization

[Sam Hobbs]

Is it possible to adjust the frequency of the automatic clock
synchronization done by XP? Alternatively, can we cause the synchronization
to be done explitly? I also prefer to know how far off my system's clock was
before the synchronization.

I use the NIST (the United States National Institute of Standards and Time)
program to synchronize my system every day because the XP solution is not
flexible enough. I might have missed seeing something relevant about the XP
solution so if I have I am interested in knowing I have. If someone could
tell me where to look or what to look for, then that is all I need.

 

[Eric P.]

Yes you can synchronize your computer clock with one of the many time
servers as often as you like.
I have Windows XP Home and have to make a change in the registry to
change the interval, heard Windows XP lets you do this via the screen
you get by clicking the time in the system tray.
That's also the place to change the time server to another one if you want.
I'm not running Windows XP at this moment so if you are interested in
the registry change I have to look it up, same thing for the list of NTP
time servers.

 

[Eric P.]

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_inet_time.htm
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.html

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Is it possible to adjust the frequency of the automatic clock
synchronization done by XP?

Run regedit and do a search for "specialpollinterval". Change the
decimal value 604800 (the number of seconds in a week) to
whatever number of seconds you want.



Or use a third-party program instead of the built-in Windows
function. I like and use TClock, which does a number of useful
things besides this.

 

[Sam Hobbs]

Thank you. I need to spend more time looking at Doug Knox's site; he
obviously has a lot of very useful stuff.

 

[Sam Hobbs]

In

Run regedit and do a search for "specialpollinterval". Change the
decimal value 604800 (the number of seconds in a week) to
whatever number of seconds you want.

Thank you. I searched the internet for "specialpollinterval" and now I have
plenty of information about using it and such.

Or use a third-party program instead of the built-in Windows
function. I like and use TClock, which does a number of useful
things besides this.

Yes, there is an abundance of third-party programs for this purpose. The
NIST utility I use is not the most convenient but it is good enough for me.
The source code is available and probably many commercial utilities are
based on the NIST source code.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Thank you. I searched the internet for "specialpollinterval" and now
I have plenty of information about using it and such.

You're welcome. Glad to help.