Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Name

Date/Time

Synopsis

Configures the internal clock on the local machine.

To Launch

• Start → Settings → Control Panel → Date/Time

• Right-click on taskbar → Adjust Date/Time

• Command interpreter → control timedate.cpl

Description

There are two tabs on this property sheet:

Date&Time

Specifies the current date and time for the internal system clock on the local machine

Time Zone

Chooses a time zone for the machine and specifies whether to adjust the clock for daylight-savings time when appropriate

Date/Time is really only necessary in a workgroup scenario (see Section later in this article).

Notes

• There are several ways to solve the problem of time synchronization for computers in a domain:

  • Windows 2000 member servers and client computers automatically synchronize themselves with Windows 2000 domain controllers, which automatically synchronize themselves with the PDC emulator, which is typically the first domain controller installed in the forest root domain. This PDC emulator should itself be synchronized to an external time server (such as a Windows 2000 member server or clocking device) using the net time command. Otherwise, the System log will show repeated W32Time error events telling you to do so.

  • If you also have downlevel (Windows NT) computers, use the net time command in a logon script on your domain controllers to synchronize these downlevel computers with your Windows 2000 domain controllers.

• Since Windows 2000 domain controllers use sequence numbers in order to identify directory-replication ...