[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>
More information about the questions
mailing list