Modify the Internet Time Synchronization Schedule

Posted in Software, Tips & Tricks, Troubleshoot

I have an interesting time synchronisation issue whenever I switch from Mac OS X to Windows 7 (on Bootcamp partition). The timezone settings are correct, and Windows time scheduling is enabled. Yet I end up with a time difference of 2 hours in Windows. The time.nist.gov time synchronisation seem to be correct and manual synchronisation definitely works, however not knowing when time is synced or not gets annoying.

The solution is simple (but slightly complicated) by going into Windows XP & Windows registry keys:

System Key:

Value Name: SpecialPollInterval

Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)

Value Data: Seconds in Decimal

By default it’s 93a80 (in hex), which is 604800 seconds (in decimal), which means every 7 days. Yeah … that’s not very convient. I’ve reset it to once a hour; every 3600 seconds (in decimal), E10 in hex.

Prefer a command line solution (which is far more complicated)? Checkout this post at Microsoft Technet.

net stop w32time

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionDateTimeServers /v 0 /t REG_SZ /d tock.usno.navy.mil
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionDateTimeServers /v 1 /t REG_SZ /d tick.usno.navy.mil
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionDateTimeServers /v 2 /t REG_SZ /d time.windows.com
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionDateTimeServers /v 3 /t REG_SZ /d time-b.nist.gov

net start w32time
w32tm /resync