Configure Domain Controller Time Syncronization with External Source

Clock

The PDC Emulator in your domain is the only system you should need to run this on. The rest of the systems should sync with this DC. I've included the commands below that you can run against your secondary DCs just to make sure they know what they should be doing. This is a rare thing to have to do ... but I ended up having to do it today because the time source configured on our domain (long ago) stopped serving up time. WARNING: To much time skew between your current time and the updated time could cause serious headaches for your clients. WARNING!

On your PDC Emulator from an elevated command prompt:

### First off ... how bad is the skew. If you're too far off you may want to do this in an MX window: w32tm /stripchart /computer:0.north-america.pool.ntp.org /samples:5 /dataonly

### Gives you the current configuration including what time source you're currently using. w32tm /query /configuration

### Status ... also shows the source w32tm /query /status

### This sets the new peer list for time sync (Note: This could be any number of sources like time.windows.com -- I chose pool.ntp.org) w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:"0.north-america.pool.ntp.org,1.north-america.pool.ntp.org,2.north-america.pool.ntp.org,3.north-america.pool.ntp.org" /syncfromflags:manual

### Actually updates the configuration w32tm /config /update

### Performs a synchronization. If you know your time is off by a couple minutes you should be able to watch the time jump in the clock in the notification area. w32tm /resync

### Verify your time is now up to date with the source w32tm /stripchart /computer:0.north-america.pool.ntp.org /samples:5 /dataonly

Secondary Domain Controllers:

### Tell the secondary DC to use the domain hierarchy for sync w32tm /config /syncfromflags:domhier

### Tell it to save that update w32tm /config /update

### Resync... w32tm /resync

Bonus - Check your time against an external time server: w32tm /stripchart /computer:time.windows.com /samples:5 /dataonly