XP/2000: configure client sntp time protocol settings

Contributed by qmchenry June 9, 2004  
Tagged: Windows

Using the simple network time protocol (SNTP) client on a host allows automatic adjustments to the system time. Keeping the time consistent between hosts in a network is essential for some applications and is helpful for correlating events on different systems.

Network time protocols use a client/server architecture. The client configuration requires the name of one or more time servers. To determine the current configuration of the client, use the following command from a command prompt:

C:\>net time /querysntp
This computer is not currently configured to use a specific SNTP server.

To configure the client to use the time server time.windows.com, use the following command:

C:\>net time /setsntp:time.windows.com

It may be necessary to restart the w32time service. To do this from the command line, use the following two commands:

net stop w32time
net start w32time

These settings will persist after the system reboots.