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On Windows 2003 it is possible via the registry to set a custom interval for updates.

This is done via the following registry key:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient\SpecialPollInterval

After adjusting this key and then restarting the Windows Time service, when I update the time changes to (for my setting) one day from the time I clicked the update button.

What I don't know how to do is set the exact time at which the update occurs?

neildeadman
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    This is a really bad idea... NTPd and the Windows Time Service intentionally add random amounts of "fuzz" to the polling interval to prevent servers from getting overloaded. This prevents bad time. Consider 1000 machines all set to poll the same server at the top of every hour: that's 1000 packets that need to be processed at basically the same instant. This results in a network spike, a CPU spike on the server, dropped packets, and poor timestamps. – rmalayter Nov 26 '12 at 17:05

2 Answers2

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If you really want to synchronize at a specific time, your best bet would be to set the automated interval to a very, very large number, and then use the windows scheduler to run w32tm /config /update. If I got this wrong, you can consult the official documentation.

chutz
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You can specify the refresh interval only. It will refresh on that interval when the server is restarted, or the time service is restarted. You could make a scheduled task to invoke "w32tm /resync /nowait" to schedule the sync's to happen a predetermined times.

Clayton
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