> Looking for a good FREE and accurate program to set and maintain PC time
> with systems running XP professional. Would prefer something that
utilizes
> the Internet for this. Am using About Time but not so sure that I'm in
> love with it.
>
> Is the date/time function in XP Pro accurate enough?
>
why screw around? run the 'real thing', NTP v4, same as the unix servers
run...
start here, http://www.ntp.org/
first, in XP Pro, go into admin tools -> Services, and 'STOP' and 'DISABLE'
the built in Windows Time Service, its rather sucky (it just hard sets the
system clock about once a day, which isn't desirable behavior in my book).
Now, use this GUI install of NTP v4.1.72 for NT/2K/XP...
http://www.five-ten-sg.com/util/ntp4172.zip
and configure it to use one or more of these servers...
server ntp1.sf-bay.org
server ntp2.sf-bay.org
server reloj.kjsl.com
server ntp1.mainecoon.com
server ntp2.mainecoon.com
server time.berkeley.netdot.net
(all of which I chose from the public stratum 2 server list on
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock2a.html on the basis of their
being in the SF bay area, and reasonably well connected and publically
offered.... if your ISP runs a NTP server, by all means use that... its good
idea to have 2-3 servers configured).
leave the service running for an hour or two to stabilize (it takes time to
set the time :D), and open a commandline window, and type NTPTRACE...
C:\>ntptrace
localhost: stratum 3, offset 0.008663, synch distance 0.28957
lanfill.lmi.net: stratum 2, offset 0.159794, synch distance 0.10738
usno.pa-x.dec.com: stratum 1, offset -0.084321, synch distance 0.00421,
refid 'USNO'
(LMI.NET is my ISP)
oh, if you have a local unix/linux system, by all means configure ntp v4 on
it, then use IT as the reference server for the rest of your network
workstations...