re: Demystifying Group Policy Settings

big fan of time — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:33:52 GMT

Hi Ryan, I've enjoyed your blog postings, especially the one about how clients weight which server to contact; I know Windows Time isn't the sexiest service, but hey, it's important.

I wasn't sure where to submit something like this, so this seems as good a place as any. I was using w32tm on Server 2008 and Vista and noticed when I give it an unexpected argument it responds:

"The following argumetnts were unexpected:"

A small typo, but it kind of sticks out. :)

(It's correct on Server 2003)

re: Demystifying Group Policy Settings

Ryan Sizemore — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:39:42 GMT

Glad to hear we have a fan! I will file a bug so we can get this fixed. Thanks for pointing this out!

re: Demystifying Group Policy Settings

hgerstung — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:47:16 GMT

Hi Ryan,

I just wanted to thank you for this blog - which I just discovered with the help of a post in comp.protocols.time.ntp ;-)

Good to know that you are taking care of W32tm and its numerous user (often unknown to themselves). I will definitely send a few customers your way which experience problems with setting up everything the right way.

One thing I would like to see is a short comparison of the different w32tm versions used in XP, 2003, Vista and 2008. We feel that they sometime behave completely different even between two SP levels of the same OS and a hint or a config setting we recommended sometimes becomes counter productive after the next update.

Keeping us all informed about changes in w32tm in upcoming SPs and new OS products would be a huuuge relief.

The other thing I would like to learn more about is how to use a hardware reference (like a GPS time receiver connected to the serial port or a PCI/PCIe slot card) with w32tm. I know that it does not make a lot of sense to even try and put direct support for the large number of available clocks in w32tm, but most products come with their own drivers and software to ensure that the system time is correct down to a fraction of a second. How can I set this up correctly on my Windows machine and how can I monitor that it actually works?

Something like that would be extremely helpful to most users, I belief.

Again, thanks a bunch for maintaining this blog! Now I go and start my PR machine for you ;-)

Regards,

Heiko