Windows Clock drift - Time way off

[Steerpike]

This may be a coincidence, and/or be totally unrelated to Sage, but the computer I'm using as my main Sage machine is now exhibiting serious clock drift. The clock is 'off' by two minutes or more in the past two hours, and was off by at least 12 minutes over the course of a day; this is obviously affecting my ability to record shows on time! The clock is invariably slowing down.

It may be related to the general installation of Sage (approx 2+ weeks ago), OR, the much more recent turning on of tracing (as instructed in this post: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...185#post146185 ), or it could be relating to installing/configuring HIP (see this post: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...269#post146269 ) - these are the most recent events on the computer.

Any thoughts?

I did a quick search of the forum, but 'time' generates an awful lot of hits! Thanks!

(update)
OK, more searching - found this post - http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ime+clock+slow
Looks like Sage is set to synch to a sage server, but ... seems like it's not very reliable? That thread suggests I might want to use this service http://tf.nist.gov/service/its.htm - is that still good advice?

[ke6guj]

This computer, is it a home built, or OEM-built? Over/under-clocked after a Windows install?

I have heard of store-bought computers sometimes having problems with significantly fast or slow clocks due to the way that the software was installed. Places like Dell make a master drive image of a computer and then install that to the HD of a lot of computers. For instance, originally built on a 2Ghz computer, that same image installed on a 2.2Ghz computer may have a clock that ran 10% fast!! The same could happen if you just swapped out a CPU in your system or did some under/overclocking.

Found this in a Deja search:

My machine is not a Dell but a homebrew Athlon XP 1800+ on a K7N420 Pro
running Windows XP Pro. Rather than losing it was gaining. Looks as if Dell
made their image on a fast machine and sold it with slower machines. Now I
wonder if the clock problem began when I changed my bios to load high
performance defaults recently, the opposite of the Dell issue. Maybe it
upset timings somewhere. Maybe w32time needs to reconfigure itself more
often - perhaps at activation and whenever it synchronizes with a time
server. Everything else runs OK (and fast too!).


Anyway with w32tm.exe /unregister I got an access denied error even though I
was logged as admin. Maybe this is because the program w32tm.exe will not
run if the service w32time is already running.


So I did:


Start->Run cmd.exe
net stop w32time
w32tm.exe /unregister
w32tm.exe /register
net start w32time


and got no errors and a clock that runs fine now.


Explanation for other amateurs: You should be logged on as administrator to
do all this. Note the difference between "tm" and "time". The first line
starts the Command prompt. The second line stops the service w32time. The
third and fourth lines remove all registry configuration information which
is the vital step thanks to the MVPs. The fifth line restarts the service.
You can get help about w32tm by typing w32tm /? at the command prompt.


Hope this helps someone else.


Again many thanks for the most valuable replies.

Now, if that doesn't help, then untill you get the problem fixed, a workaround may be to do a registry edit and have Windows resync the clock every 15-30 minutes.

[basset]

Hi,

A while back I had a similar problem and even telling sage to sync with the server didn't help. Needless to say ... I ended up missing minutes of programs .. especially "next week on..." info

So I installed a freeware NTL timesync software .. that syncs time with NTP servers. That has been working really well for me ... I set it up to sync every hour.

Try the one below, or any of the others listed. Should remedy the problem

Basset



http://www.snapfiles.com/get/lilatomic.html

Actually .. this link has a whole bunch of them

All freeware
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/ne...wtimesync.html

[jagee23]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307897/EN-US/

Here is a knowledge base article from Microsoft on how to sync time using the windows time service.

Here is a list of SNTP time servers available on the internet - http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q262680

[JUC]

i doubt this is it..but how old is your motherboard? Is it possible the CMOS battery is dying? unlikely because they tend to last a while but worth a shot...
JUC

[Steerpike]

The computer is ~2-3 years old, hand-crafted, Asus mobo, Pentium 1.6 GHz; one of many that I've hand-built. It certainly 'could' be a dying battery, but ... since I never turn it off, I would have thought the battery would not be relevant. It's been in service for years as my main file server/general purpose computer, and has now been re-purposed as my test Sage box, until I can decide on an HTPC case, and find the time to actually order and build the darned thing!

Based on my more detailed searching of the forums, it seems the option to sync to Sage's server is not necessarily a good idea; several people seem to have issues (though, a long time ago - one-off problem?). This is surprising, since the manual says:
"Sync System Clock with SageTV Server
Enable this feature if you want to synchronize your PC system clock with the SageTV server. This is highly recommended because the SageTV server is synchronized with the US Military Atomic clock for accuracy".

I can fix this at my end by disabling this feature and synching to any of the many recommended sources, but ... IF the SageTV server is off, I presume people would want to fix it. Is there a way to validate the 'SageTV Server' time?

I have logging turned on (troubleshooting other issues), and I see the following two entries in my log:

Tue 3/14 16:55:32.769 Setting the system clock to be Tue 3/14 16:56:01.998
Tue 3/14 16:56:02.237 WarlockRipper got 364 channels

(this is the most recent entry with 'clock' in it). This seems to be telling me that at 16:55, Sage tried to set clock to 16:56 - which is AHEAD - and it seems to have succeeded, since the timestamp of next entry is ahead (speculation of course). So does this suggest SageTV Server is ok, and something else is wrong?

I guess I'll do this - disable the auto-sync to Sage, sync manually to an external source, then monitor. If it quickly gets out of sync, then something is up with my system.

[zz5]

There's nothing wrong with the Sage servers. They provide the time just fine. I keep my watch set accurate to the second so I know the Sage servers are right on time. The thread you linked to was just a one time problem with Sage servers. It something to do with your computer, not the Sage servers.

Windows does not get the time from the BIOS once the computer is booted. Windows only reads the time from the BIOS when it first loads. So the battery being bad wouldn't be the problem.

[Steerpike]

Well, the plot thickens!

Yesterday, I disabled the SageTV Service synchronization, and ... my clock has been accurate for 24 hours now (I run w32tm on another computer, for comparison).

I agree with previous poster, I never reboot/shutdown, and thus, bios battery should have no relevance.

If others are sure that the Sage service has been accurate these past few days, then I don't know what to conclude.

I guess I'll leave clock synch. off for now, and just manually keep it accurate. Maybe in a week, I'll turn it back on and see what happens.

To better troubleshoot this, how often does the local Sage application on my PC sync to the external server, and, are the entries in the trace I pasted above indicative of a clock-sync action?

[Morgan111]

I also had found my clock to be off a minute or more yesterday or the day before as well when it is always right on time. I figured it was being pulled off by Sage so I disabled it and have not seen a problem since then.

[blade]

I always syncronize with Sage's server and have never had a problem. I think I've been using Sage a little over a year now.

[stevech]

I don't know if Sage's time synch changes Windows' date/time.
On my two always-on PCs, I changed the Windows registry so it synchs to NIST every 3 hours instead of every few days which is the default.

A microsoft support app note explains how to do this change to the registry.

[Steerpike]

Originally Posted by stevech

... On my two always-on PCs, I changed the Windows registry so it synchs to NIST every 3 hours instead of every few days which is the default.

A microsoft support app note explains how to do this change to the registry.

I'm having a hard time getting this to work the way I'd expect it to. I've got time synching to work, but NOT at the interval I'm requesting.

I made changes to the registry, based on reading numerous articles on the web (but this is the one I started with: http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/985/ )

I first set the 'SpecialPollInterval' to 3600 - one hour. But how do you determine if it ran or not? ... well, I see entries in the event viewer (start/run/eventvwr, 'system' entry), but they are not showing up every hour. But reading more, it's not clear that EVERY time synch is logged; I found this registry key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient\EventLogFlags

Read more about it here:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Window...e20e21033.mspx

"Specifies whether the time service client logs an event when its ability to reach the peer computer changes. "
The default was 0; changed it to 1.

Then saw this note, which suggests changes made are not effective unless you issue a command, so issued this command.

Activation Method
To make changes to this entry effective, at the command line, type:

w32tm /config /update

Now, even after doing all this, on the machine in question, I see entries in event viewer every 3 hours, not every hour!

One slight concern is the comment found above in the MS technote relating to EventLogFlags ... "Specifies whether the time service client logs an event when its ability to reach the peer computer changes. " - so even with this flag set to '1', is it supposed to log EVERY sync event, or only sync events where ability to reach the server CHANGES? And, it refers to 'peer computer', not time server ...

Anyway - what I'm trying to do is force a sync every hour, and get that sync attempt somehow logged so I can troubleshoot. Am I going about it in the right way?

[stevech]

I think that a first-order question is:
Does Sage get the time from NIST *and* update Windows' time or just Sage's internal time?

[GTwannabe]

Originally Posted by zz5

There's nothing wrong with the Sage servers. They provide the time just fine. I keep my watch set accurate to the second so I know the Sage servers are right on time. The thread you linked to was just a one time problem with Sage servers. It something to do with your computer, not the Sage servers.

Windows does not get the time from the BIOS once the computer is booted. Windows only reads the time from the BIOS when it first loads. So the battery being bad wouldn't be the problem.

I had a problem with a runaway Windows clock on my nForce2 board when the BIOS battery started to wear out. Swapping in a fresh battery fixed the problem.

[Steerpike]

Originally Posted by stevech

I think that a first-order question is:
Does Sage get the time from NIST *and* update Windows' time or just Sage's internal time?

I'm guessing it's updating windows' time - but can't be sure. However, I can say with certainty that the SageTV Client program synchronizes the client computer's clock to the SageTV Server computer. While I was having this problem, I noticed that every time I launched the SageTV Client, my laptop computer clock would jump back several minutes.

At this point, I'm focusing simply on getting windows sync to work predictably; if I can get that working predictably, I'll then turn Sage Synch back on and see what happens.

[ben_95sl1]

I would suggest turning off sagetv server time synch and downloading dimension4 program, which is free...and it will update windows time as fequently as you'd like (I have every 30min), you can use it for the clients too. Works flawlessly. Now every time a recording starts, my satellite display actually shows the time changing, for example: 8:59 to 9:00. I've had the sage server off by minutes, now its within ms. Missing even a few seconds at the beginning or end can be a huge problem with WAF.

[stevech]

you'd have to also turn off Windows' time synch, unless that 3rd party program does so.

[roxy99]

My problem ha been that when sagetv is running, my PC clock and hence SageTV's clock moves faster. The clock runs fast at the huge rate of about 15sec per hour. I turned off the sages sych and still noticed the runnaway clock problem. Basically I opened up the windows clock and an atomic clock from the internet. The system clock stayed neck- to neck with the atomic clock for 1 full hour without any synch events.

I did the same test with Sagetv running in window mode and sure enough the clock started outpacing the atomic clock showing on my web browser (about 15sec per hour.). Something to do with SageTV running messes up the internal clock.

My solution was not really a solution but merely a workaround. I underclocked my AthlonXP 3200 to 2500 levels by setting the FSB from 200(default) to 166.

Now everything runs perfect. I think that there is an issue between certain motherboards and 200mhz FSB with SageTV. BTW, my mobo is an Nforce2 chipset.

[DFA]

Roxy99:

Huge rate error? Mine occassionaly hiccups and goes as fast as the rate of 60 sec indicated / 45 sec actual (25% fast). It's quite visible without stopwatch needed. I'd have to clock sync every 5 minutes to keep up with that error. A complete shut-down and removal of AC power will right it again. What touches it off; not a clue. I did a lot of Googling and found some paralells. One guy attributed it to a Java app he had. I may not see it for some time and then it seems I'll have a rash of them. Been acting up a bit just lately.


GTwannabe:

I also have Asus nForce2 MoBo. Was your clock going extraordinarily fast as well. I had read in my Googling that BIOS battery could be to blame.

Is the nForce2 chipset the common denominator here?

I better go try a battery because when the clock rate goes way up, the WAF goes way down if I don't spot it first.

EDIT: Does Sage clock-sync with every re-start? I use the Sage sync service. I tried a large variety of NIST sites but had one problem or another with consistant, reliable response (even those that were recommended by sworn testamonials). Sage has actually proved the most reliable IMHO.

DFA

[DFA]

Here's the thread about the guy who seemed have the same runaway clock problem like myself that, in the end, attributed it to a Java app.

I also found that the opening website I had selected for my browser which downloaded a popular Java applet to my machine seemed to be a trigger but apparently not the only one if it was one.

Perhaps it is some weird convergence of Java, low CMOS battery and hardware.

As I undestand it, the speed of modern PC clocks are adjustable and that clock sync applications can calculate the error from the last clock sync and make increases or decreases in speed to obtain increasing accuracy as syncs proceed. It is as if something grossly miscalcuates error and gives a huge speed bump. In my case always grossly fast when it occurs otherwise dead nuts on.

If and when it occurs, it seems that most times I have been doing a lot of messing around with browser, file manager, and other entertaining maintenance and update type stuff.

Not sure if this is much help to Steerpike since I think he was reporting a slow clock but have been giving my intermittant clock problem a lot of thought for a long time.

DFA