You might come across situations when you need multiple Windows machines to have their times synchronized. You could setup time synchronization protocols between the machines, making one as the master and the others as slaves.
An easier alternative is to sync all the machine times to Internet times - the NIST time or Windows server time available by default in the Date & Time settings. Once you sync the machines with the Internet time, the machines might start drifting away over a period. Hence Windows periodically syncs the times with the Internet time; however, the default sync duration ranges from few days to weeks.
You can make the time sync happen much more frequently - like few hours. To do this, you need to make system registry changes. The following instructions are for Windows XP machine; for other versions, the process might be similar.
1. Go to Start-> Run and type "regedit" to open the registry settings.
2. Navigate to the following in the Registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
3. The parameter you need to change is SpecialPollInterval
Right click on 'SpecialPollInterval' in the right hand column and select Modify>Decimal. The decimal number is in seconds. For example, you can set it to 86400 to mean 24 hours.
NOTE: Please backup the Registry beforehand to avoid any issues later (I do not know how this can be done).
Reference:
1. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/55562-45-changing-frequency-internet-time-synchronisation
An easier alternative is to sync all the machine times to Internet times - the NIST time or Windows server time available by default in the Date & Time settings. Once you sync the machines with the Internet time, the machines might start drifting away over a period. Hence Windows periodically syncs the times with the Internet time; however, the default sync duration ranges from few days to weeks.
You can make the time sync happen much more frequently - like few hours. To do this, you need to make system registry changes. The following instructions are for Windows XP machine; for other versions, the process might be similar.
1. Go to Start-> Run and type "regedit" to open the registry settings.
2. Navigate to the following in the Registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
3. The parameter you need to change is SpecialPollInterval
Right click on 'SpecialPollInterval' in the right hand column and select Modify>Decimal. The decimal number is in seconds. For example, you can set it to 86400 to mean 24 hours.
NOTE: Please backup the Registry beforehand to avoid any issues later (I do not know how this can be done).
Reference:
1. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/55562-45-changing-frequency-internet-time-synchronisation
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