Has anyone been having problems with their clock being off due to inability to log onto time.windows.com?  A week or so ago I noticed that my machine was two minutes slow which was causing me to miss the start of shows - I manually changed the time to fix it.  Yesterday I noticed that the time was once again slow.  I tried to update with time.windows.com which failed.  I changed the ntp server to tock.utoronto.ca and it updated immediately. Even trying right not I get an error with connecting to time.windows.com but not with the utoronto server - therefore it shouldn't be a network problem on my end.

Has anyone else noticed reliability problems with time.windows.com?  The other site in the dropdown box also didn't work (time.nist.gov).

This has been discussed in other threads.  The consensus seems to be setting MCE to use a regional NTP server or pool instead of time.windows.com.

NTP pools
NTP Stratum Two servers (pick one geographically close to you)

That's what I have done but by default millions, if not hundreds of millions, of PCs are using an NTP server that is unreliable.  Why is it so hard for the largest computer company in the world to run an NTP server?

I always use tick.usno.navy.mil ... If you need a second, I use tock.usno.navy.mil

I have always relied on an ap called 1click clocksync. which updates your clock up to once a minute. http://www.express-computing.com/products/clocksync/ and i have the host set as utcnist.colorado.edu and this has been a very reliable host and i live in florida so location doesnt make a difference.

voge420:

I have always relied on an ap called 1click clocksync. which updates your clock up to once a minute. http://www.express-computing.com/products/clocksync/ and i have the host set as utcnist.colorado.edu and this has been a very reliable host and i live in florida so location doesnt make a difference.

Selecting a regional NTP server was traditionally recommended to spread the load around a bit, but you're right - there's nothing to stop you from pointing your PC at any public NTP source.  Modern bandwidth availability largely negates historic concerns over NTP traffic, and any NTP client should work with any NTP server.  You just need to ensure that your time source is going to be accurate and available; it sounds as though time.windows.com may not be a good choice.

The NTP pool concept allows for easy client configuration while providing far more reference servers than selecting a couple public servers.  By configuring a client to use a pool, you're opting to let someone else maintain a list of available NTP boxes.

Personally, I point my router to north-america.pool.ntp.org.  My PCs are configured to use the router's IP as their source.