[Watchman63]

I cannot get my copy of Windows XP to allow synchronization with a time server. I emailed Microsoft, and they provided a number of things that may have been the problem, but none of the advice they gave was of any help.

The only thing I can think of that may be complicating things is that I have 4 partitions on my hard drive with separate copies of XP loaded onto 3 of them for no particular reason (it seemed like a good idea at the time).

Anybody have any ideas?

[member31]

Anybody have any ideas?

yep, don't sweat the small stuff. ;)

[Watchman63]

I'm not exactly sweating it (it's been that way for a year); it's just that I like to know that the time on my computer is accurate without getting out the shortwave radio to manually synchronize with WWV.

[Larred]

You might do a search for a program called Atomic Time (I think that's the name), it automatically queries the atomic time server and synch's your Windows clock. I quit using it because XP does that automatically. This isn't a fix for you, but it could be a decent work around...

[Mike]

Try using a different domain to sync your time with.

Here are a few examples. To input them, double click on your clock, click the Internet Time tab, and type the servers there.

Keep trying different ones untill you get one that works.

Sometimes I have had to do this to get my time updated.

Mike

Name IP Address Location
time-a.nist.gov 129.6.15.28 NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland
time-b.nist.gov 129.6.15.29 NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland
time-a.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov 132.163.4.101 NIST, Boulder, Colorado
time-b.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov 132.163.4.102 NIST, Boulder, Colorado
time-c.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov 132.163.4.103 NIST, Boulder, Colorado
utcnist.colorado.edu 128.138.140.44 University of Colorado, Boulder
time.nist.gov 192.43.244.18 NCAR, Boulder, Colorado
time-nw.nist.gov 131.107.1.10 Microsoft, Redmond, Washington
nist1.symmetricom.com 69.25.96.13 Symmetricom, San Jose, California
nist1-dc.glassey.com 216.200.93.8 Abovenet, Virginia
nist1-ny.glassey.com 208.184.49.9 Abovenet, New York City
nist1-sj.glassey.com 207.126.98.204 Abovenet, San Jose, California
nist1.aol-ca.truetime.com 207.200.81.113 TrueTime, AOL facility, Sunnyvale, California
nist1.aol-va.truetime.com 64.236.96.53 TrueTime, AOL facility, Virginia

[Watchman63]

I've tried the Atomic Time program (and a few others like it) and my computer will not connect with ANY timeserver. I also tried a bunch of the timeservers listed by Mike (both web & IP addresses), and they will not work. I keep getting the message that an error has occurred while synchronizing with____________.

One other problem I've had that may be related, when I have tried to download programs from an ftp site, my computer won't do that either. I've suspected that my firewall may be stopping things somehow, but even after changing firewalls I had the same problem.

Could having XP loaded onto three different partitions somehow be confusing things? Could the copy I'm using on my primary partition be set up as a network and try treating the other partitions as separate computers? The main partition that I use is not the first one that I loaded XP onto.

[Larred]

Watchman, I don't think having your drive partitioned is your problem, you wouldn't be able to have your network think they're separate computers as you'd need to have the drivers loaded and all.

What kind of firewall are you using? Do you have a router? Have you tried disabling your firewall and synching that way?