Setting NTP service for external Time source on PDC Emulator

Just a quick note to advise how I done this…in response to a support call of course.
Looked up this website http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc784929(WS.10).aspx
This looked the easiest as other sites wanted to edit the registry…I also backed up the regkey to my desktop, temporarily, before editing the registry so I could put it back to the original settings.

To check how FSMO roles are configured on the domain

netdom query /domain:wlcorporate.westlothian.gov.uk fsmo

On screen output

Schema owner             DNS name of a Domain Controller
Domain role owner        DNS name of a Domain Controller
PDC role                DNS name of a Domain Controller
RID pool manager        DNS name of a Domain Controller
Infrastructure owner     DNS name of a Domain Controller
The command completed successfully.

So now I know what is the PDC emulator, I know that  DNS name of a Domain Controller is the server that will sync time to the domain.

From a CLI shell on  DNS name of a Domain Controller type

w32tm /stripchart /computer time_source_ip_addr /samples:5 /dataonly

Usually an enterprise will have a network device that syncs to a time source on the internet, the IP Address of the network device is what you compare your PDC to.

on screen output

Tracking  time_source_ip_addr [ time_source_ip_addr].

Collecting 5 samples.
The current time is 5/31/2010 1:52:31 PM (local time).
13:52:31, -00.1630267s
13:52:33, -00.1731537s
13:52:35, -00.1735452s
13:52:37, -00.1736697s
13:52:39, -00.1735333s

You can see time is out by 1/4 of a second, now type….

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist: time_source_ip_addr /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update

This syncs the PDC Emulator to  time_source_ip_addr and to test

w32tm /stripchart /computer: time_source_ip_addr /samples:5 /dataonly

on screen output

Tracking  time_source_ip_addr [ time_source_ip_addr].

Collecting 5 samples.
The current time is 5/31/2010 1:58:57 PM (local time).
13:58:57, +00.0060605s
13:58:59, -00.0001721s
13:59:01, -00.0005527s
13:59:03, -00.0002389s
13:59:05, -00.0002778s

Which is probobaly as close as you can get to being dead-on….depending on clock’s quartz crystals of the servers and lan devices!!!!!