FIXING WK12 R2 SERVER HAVING THE WRONG TIME AFTER A REBOOT

Bizarrely this only seems to happen after joining the domain – the servers keep the time perfectly well before joining the domain.

Firstly and most importantly, if your server changes time without rebooting then it is more often than not likely to be due to a Domain Controller having the wrong time.

Check all of the clocks on your domain controllers and adjust accordingly – this probably accounts for 3 out of 4 times.

The issue I have found is that if the clock goes out too far on a reboot you can’t initiate a RDP session to fix them.

We have had an issue with a member server having reset the clock to 12 hours and 7 minutes forwards.

This is the Fix:

w32tm /config /syncfromflags:DOMHIER /update

This command tells Windows to go and look for the best time source in the domain hierarchy.  If you want to use an external time server instead you can use the commands found here: 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc784553(WS.10).aspx

net stop w32time & net start w32time

w32tm /resync /force

These two commands just “kick the Windows time service” to make sure the settings changes take effect immediately.