Synchronising time of windows machines in a Workgroup

Written by Jim Wednesday, 17 December 2008 08:00

Windows has many built in features that are hidden away from the average user. One of these commands is the ability to synchronise times on windows machines in a workgroup.

(NOTE: This Works on Win NT4, 2000, XP, 2003 but is untested on others)

To Set manually:

Open a command prompt (Start>run>cmd.exe)
type the following into the command prompt (replacing "computername" with the computers name that you have dedicated as your time server):
net.exe time \\computername /set /y
check that the command completed successfully, and your done.

To setup Automatic time synchronisation:

Test the above works successfully.
Open Scheduled Tasks ("Start > All Programs > Accessories > System tools > Scheduled Tasks" in XP)
Create a new scheduled tasks
Follow the wizard to locate net.exe (usually in C:\WINDOWS\system32 on XP)
setup the frequency of the task (how often to sync times) and anything else the wizard asks for (tick the box at the end of the XP wizard to open the advanced settings).
When the wizard finishes, open the properties of the task, and add the remainder of the following command at the end of the command line (the run dialogue in XP):
net.exe time \\computername /set /y
Click OK, and your Done !