Time synchronization problem.

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This morning I was dabbling around in my Date and Time Properties window and clicked on the "Internet Time" tab. The "Automatically synchronize with an Internet time server" setting is correctly checked and the server that was selected was the "time.nist.gov" server.

I tried pressing the "Update Now" button to see what would happen and there was a long pause during which a message which simply said:

"Please wait while Windows synchronizes with time.nist.gov"

appeared. After the pause, another message which said:

"An error occurred while Windows was synchronizing with time.nist.gov"

When I tried the "time.windows.gov" server, the same thing happened.

Googling around came up with two possible problems:

1. My firewall (Kerio 2.1.5) might be blocking port 123 somehow.
2. One of my antispyware programs might no be allowing time synchronization to occur.

I checked all of my antispyware programs (AdAware, Spybot S&D, Spyware Terminator) and none of them had any setting I could see which would do such a thing. In addition, Kerio has no rule set to block the necessary port FWICS.

After more Googling, I found a suggestion that the server name was misspelled and that I should change it to "time-a.nist.gov". I opened Regedit and went to:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DateTime\Servers

to make the change. Next, I tried clicking on the "Update Now" button again and immediately, I got the following message:

"The time has been successfully synchronized with time-a.nist.gov on 6/20/2007 at 2:30 AM."

(I have a sleep disorder.)

Since the time-a.nist.gov server ends in ".gov", I figure it's safe. However, there remains a shred of doubt. Any remarks or suggestions?

TIA

--
John Corliss
.

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