How to: Set time server on PDC
Clients and servers in a domain/forest synchronizes her time from a domain controller.
The domain controller itself synchronizes his time from the PDC (primary domain controller).
And what about the PDC (primary domain controller)? Where does he synchronize his time from?
The answer is, he synchronizes from an internet pool. But you need to set the correct pools to synchronize from on your PDC.
I will show you how easy it is. You don't need that much time.
Prerequisites
We need the NTP Servers (Network Time Protocol) for our region. They can be found on https://www.pool.ntp.org/en. On the right side of the website, you finde the regions and there you can choose your country.
In this guide, I will use the NTP Servers for Switzerland:
0.ch.pool.ntp.org
1.ch.pool.ntp.org
2.ch.pool.ntp.org
3.ch.pool.ntp.org
You also need to know, which is your PDC. This can be done by run following command in a CMD (command prompt).
netdom /query fsmo
Change time server on PDC
1. Stop the time service (w32time) net stop w32time
2. Then configure the external time source (NTP Servers) w32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual /manualpeerlist:"0.ch.pool.ntp.org, 1.ch.pool.ntp.org, 2.ch.pool.ntp.org, 3.ch.pool.ntp.org"
3. Make PDC a reliable time source for the clients
w32tm /config /reliable:yes
4. Start time service (w32time)
net start w32time
5. Time service starts synchronizing time. You can check the external time servers in the configuration
w32tm /query /configuration
6. Check Event Viewer for Errors if there are some problems with the synchronization
