Microsoft Active Directory Time Sync Settings

So I was recently asked by a client: "Why is the time on my PC 5 minutes off from my phone?"

Now this is a small environment, a very small environment (1 Server and 7 workstations). The first thing I thought about was what does the server clock look like? So I remoted into the server and sure enough it had the same time as the workstation.

I went and checked the registry and found that the server was pointed get its time from time.windows.com, but for some reason that was not working.

I then used the following command to point it to several of the pools hosted by NIST.gov

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:time-a-g.nist.gov,time-b-g.nist.gov,time-c-g.nist.gov,time-d-g.nist.gov /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update

After that I restarted the W32Time (Windows Time) service to make the update work.

Once that is done it should force a resync of the time service which could take some time to update and to sync with all the workstations.

I hope you find this post helpful, and if so please share it with your friends.