[ntp:questions] Re: Are these Windows XP clients beyond hope?

David J Taylor david-taylor at blueyonder.co.not-this-bit.nor-this-part.uk.invalid
Mon Sep 19 05:44:26 UTC 2005


Neil Trotter wrote:
[]
> All machines are keeping good time except 2 of the windows XP clients
> at one of the sites, and these are drifting wildly.  Since all the
> config files are similar, and 2 other XP clients on the same network
> (with identical config files) are staying sync'd, is this just a case
> of hopelessly bad hardware clocks, or is there something else I can
> try?

Not sure I can help any more than Danny did, but the output from my own XP 
machine is here:

http://www.david-taylor.myby.co.uk/mrtg/odin_ntp.html

and it seems stable even when running Windows Media Player or Real Player 
(or perhaps even QuickTime).  The only suggestion I can make are:

- are the clients which are drifting wildy perhaps portable PCs or systems 
which have a variable clock rate?  This could throw NTP.

- if you do a ntpq -p on those systems, do they appear to be in sync?

- are the systems set to use DMA for disk and CD/DVD access?

The general view is that XP can provide a good stable time.

Cheers,
David 





More information about the questions mailing list