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

Richard B. Gilbert rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Mon Sep 19 14:45:49 UTC 2005


Neil Trotter wrote:

>I spent an hour or two earlier tweaking ntp.conf files to accord with
>various advice found at http://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Support/WebOrder.
>
><snip>
>
>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?
>
>  
>
Set the clocks on these machines by hand and run for twenty-four hours 
without NTP!  If they gain or lose more than about 43 seconds in 
twenty-four hours, you have found the problem!  43 seconds per day is 
500 parts per million, the limit on how hard NTP can tweak the clock!  
Most computer clocks will do a lot better than this!  I'd say that two 
to five seconds per day is a typical drift figure.  This may be a 
hardware problem and almost certainly is if the machines are lightly loaded.

It's also possible that the machines are losing clock interrupts when 
they are busy.  The only solutions in that case are to get Microsoft to 
fix their software (ROTFLMAO) or use a better operating system.
<snip>




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