The Server's clock is not synchronized with the primary domain controller
Date: Thursday, November 09, 2006 @ 14:27:32 UTC
Topic: What do we know?


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The Server's clock is not synchronized with the primary domain controller's clock




I was unable to map drives to a Windows 2003 server. The error message was: The Server's clock is not synchronized with the primary domain controller's clock.

I did not know what the maximum clock difference security settings are, but I could tell you that the server's clock read 7:38am CST at 8:36am CST. I used remote desktop to log into the machine.

I could reset the clock using remote desktop, or if I wanted to, run time synchronization.

The server participating in the domain must have its clock synchronized to the domain controller. Although you can set the time manually, the error may be the symptom of a larger problem:

* Systems appear in sync but are set to different (wrong) time zones.
* The time provider is not currently accessible. (This error may be appearing in the event log of one of the affected servers: Quote: The time provider NtpClient is configured to acquire time from one or more time sources, however none of the sources are currently accessible. No attempt to contact a source will be made for 14 minutes. NtpClient has no source for accurate time.)

Seeking a registry setting that would permit the operation to continue is not a good solution. A search of the newsgroups comes up with:

Time has to be within 5 minutes max for Kerberos authentication to work.

Whether or not this is true, the workaround is to manually set one of the clocks. The true solution is to make sure that time synchronization is working correctly on the domain with all servers. This also appears as Terminal Services Error 2457 Quote: This server's clock is not synchronized with the primary domain controller's clock.





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