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I have two machines and I'd like their clocks to be in sync for various reasons. Machine 1 is an XP machine located in the office. Machine 2 is a VPS hosted by a third party running Windows Server 2008 R2. These machines are not in any kind of workgroup or on a domain together. They are completely separate machines.

Machine 2 is currently syncing once a week to time.windows.com. The clock on Machine 2 does seem to wander a bit within that week interval. What I would like to do is have Machine 1 set its clock based on the clock of Machine 2.

I have tried configuring w32tm on the XP machine. This is what I used for configuration:

w32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual /manualpeerlist:"<ip address of machine 2>"

However, whenever I issue the /resync command I get "The computer did not resync because no time data was available". I have made sure to start the windows time service on machine 2, and I have added firewall exceptions for UDP port 123.

Is there something I need to configure on Machine 2 (other than just starting the time service) in order to get it to respond?

Edit: I have also run w32tm /config /reliable:YES /update on Machine 2. I am still getting "The computer did not resync because no time data was available". Is there something else I'm missing?

Edit 2: The solution I used was most closely related to the answer I marked as correct. However, this article offered additional registry tweaks that worked in my case: http://www.articlesbase.com/networks-articles/how-to-configure-windows-server-as-a-ntp-server-108481.html

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  • Are either machines a member of any AD domain, even if they're not in the same one?
    – MDMarra
    Nov 19, 2012 at 19:33
  • If the clock skews during the week you can set a polling interval (mdmarra has discussed this in the past). Another option would be to set both to use the same 3rd party source.
    – TheCleaner
    Nov 19, 2012 at 19:40
  • @MDMarra Unfortunately no - just two independent machines :(
    – Eric
    Nov 19, 2012 at 21:34
  • That's actually better for your needs in this case. At least as it related to time services.
    – MDMarra
    Nov 19, 2012 at 22:07

3 Answers 3

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Machine 2 needs to be confiugred as an authoritative time source. Ie. NTPSERVER = 1. From the registry key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpServer] Enabled = 1

Alternatively you can do that via the command w32tm /config /reliable:YES /update

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  • I just tried this, and it didn't seem to work. Somewhere along the way I saw some text saying that /reliable:YES was only valid for domain controllers? Unfortunately these machines are not on any domain or workgroup, just standalone machines
    – Eric
    Nov 19, 2012 at 22:17
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    I'm marking this as correct, as this was part of the solution. However, I needed to change the AnnounceFlags as well. This url solved my problem: articlesbase.com/networks-articles/…
    – Eric
    Nov 19, 2012 at 23:45
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There are also some good ports of NTP reference code that I like to use on Windows machines. Look at

  http://www.meinbergglobal.com/english/sw/ntp.htm#ntp_nt_stable 
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"The W32Time service is not a full-featured NTP solution that meets time-sensitive application needs."

I would switch to a standard NTP service. Some hints here http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/setup.html

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