Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Windows time changing over and over

Collapse
This topic is closed.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Windows time changing over and over

    Just curious if anyone else has run into this particular issue. This has occured with machines running Windows XP Pro and Server 2003.

    On Friday afternoon (Friday the 13th, of course), the majority of the PCs and servers on our network moved the time ahead an hour. After they had already properly adjust for Daylight Savings.

    The first couple I figured it was just that we had missed the proper patch for this year and manually changed them back. Then the issue cropped up again and caused a number of business critical apps to fail because they couldn't sync with the time on the domain controller.

    Then the PCs I had manually changed to the correct time jumped ahead an hour again.

    Turning off the auto adjust for DST fixed the issue. But I had to fix every machine that was either unmanned or manned by staff that can't handle following instructions (with screenshots!) in how to uncheck a bloody box. Which is to say, 95% of our computers.

    At 4:50 PM on Friday (with a ban on overtime) I was not going to go chasing down the cause because management is happy with just the appearance that everything is A-OK. Bully for them. Today, we're going to try ripping out the DST patches from the last couple years and re-apply one at a time to see if one or the other caused the issue to occur. If that doesn't work, then we're temporarily dead in the water on this issue. The DST auto adjust being disabled also means they won't adjust in the fall and that will throw off the payroll tracking and will mean that I'll have to manually fix the time on all those PCs again. This is unacceptable (to me, anyway) but I've certainly got time to work it out.

    I haven't had the problem at home (Win XP Pro & XP Home). I've also checked with my contacts in the IT departments of a number of local businesses but, so far, we're the only ones having this problem. I'm thinking it's just a patch conflict, but if anyone else has run into this and knows the proper fix, I'd appreciate a heads up.

    Thanks!

  • #2
    99% guarantee that a machine on the network is claiming to be a time server for the domain, and has the time screwed up (or has an invalid set of patches for DST).

    Even odds that it's a user's PC who's managed to get admin type privileges and screwed up his/her computer.

    Don't have the time right now to google for how to find out which one(s) are the invalid time servers, but that should give you a place to look.

    Comment

    Working...
    X