Windows 8.1 Time Problems

[M_Lyons10]

Thank you for all of your help everyone.  I am going to try the software Bud Man suggested over the weekend and I will post back.  Hopefully that will resolve the issue.  :)

 

Thanks Again,

[+BudMan MVC]

Its really odd that  your seeing such swings in time..  But all the other software can do is give us more info to work with.

 

After you have it up and running take a look at ntpq and then command pe, this will give you status of your machine..

 

So my w81 vm still running and even still had the old ntpq up - so ran it again and you can see it has adjusted the time from being 71ms off to 2ms

 

 

And that bottom one its having an issue talking too, reach is not 377 so having some issues talking to it - but its still selected as main server -- that *, if it keeps acting up it will switch to one of the other ones.

 

But seems your seeing swings of hours -- so something is really not right.  But maybe actual ntp can get keep it up todate?  Curious to see what it shows after its been running for a while.  But make sure you set time before running it, even if manual.  If it has a LARGE difference it takes a long to to bring it into sync.

 

Notice that middle one there - large jitter, which is the difference between 2 samples.. Normally you want that to be very small for a good timesource to use.

 

Notice off my timeserver, the one it is syncing too * has a very low jitter .5ms, and its only off by 1.5ms from that stratum 1 source..

 

 

Its N40L running vms - not really a great timeserver sort of box.  But as you can see its normally +-10 ms to the pool monitoring server.  And it seems to be getting to be less of a swing -- takes time to stabilize -- but then will reboot it, or do something really to hit its cpu, etc.  And it might drift off more, etc.  The whole point of ntp is not only keep your time close to your time source but to adjust the clock to keep time on its own in synce with your source.  So the longer the ntp client runs and has access to acturate source the better it will keep time - like women in the same house their time of the month get into sync.  Same goes with a box running ntp, it will over time keep closer time to your source.

 

Being part of the ntp pool lets them monitor my server, if it goes offline, or its score drops to less than 10 I get a email ;)  I will bring my stratum 1 online here sometime when I get around to hooking up my gps to my raspberry pi ;)

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

^ I'm really surprised that the OP hasn't tested if it was a hardware (battery) issue or an OS dependent issue at this point. Really doesn't make sense to continue troubleshooting it as a software issue without attempting to isolate the issue prior

 

EDIT: The latter could be done by simply watching the BIOS clock for discrepancies. I think that was already mentioned in this thread though

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah I am not sure either.. His swings seem to be huge.. Leaving the machine on the bios screen for a bit should tell you right away if the clock is drifting like crazy.

 

I don't think ntp software is going to fix his issue if he has those kinds of swings..  But it much better at keeping accurate time than the built in system.  I always run ntp on all my boxes..  Worse thing that happens is he or anyone else reading this thread gets exposed to deeper workings of ntp - which at least to me is fascinating and fun!!  Yes I am a ?ber Geek ;) and proud of it.. 

[M_Lyons10]

Thanks Bud Man, that NTP software seems to have fixed my problem.  The only issue I am having is that upon Boot or Wakeup, it is not starting the service.  I was unable to find a way to set it to start with Windows.  Am I missing something or do I need to manually do this somehow?  Once started, it works perfect!

 

Thanks Again for all of your help.

[+BudMan MVC]

the service should of been set on install to autostart..  You can see it in services.msc -- I just booted my win81 box, as you can see it has started, set to automatic and already starting to sync to the pool ntp servers.  Reach has not gotten to 377 so you can tell it has not been running very long yet.

 

 

Your built in windows time should be set to disabled - this should of all happened automatically when you installed the software, unless you told it not to?  If they are both trying to autostart then sure you could have issues.

 

 

 

[M_Lyons10]

Thanks, those settings are all correct.  The Network Time Protocol is set to start Automically, but was Stopped.  I restarted it from there, hopefully that will resolve the issue.  Perhaps that's why my Windows Time was having issues.  Perhaps the service was stopping or failing to start...  Very frustrating.  But at least my time doesn't change during the course of having the computer on anymore.  MUCH better...  lol

[+BudMan MVC]

There seems to be something major wrong with your box if that services is failing or not starting, etc.  Good luck..