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This is intended to walk you through setting up a Microsoft Windows 2003 Standard Server domain controller as an Authoritative Time Server, which synchronizes with an external time source. All members of the domain can then synchronize time with the internal Authoritative Time Server (stratum 2). This method is considered a simplified method because it does not require manual or direct modifications to the system registry of the domain controller(s).
I have not tested this method.
Configure the Windows Time service on the PDC emulator when you deploy a new forest root domain or when you move the role of the PDC emulator in the forest root domain to a new domain controller. If you move the role of the PDC emulator to a new domain controller you must also Change the Windows Time service configuration on the previous PDC emulator.
It is highly suggested that you first familiarize yourself with how time servers operate. A good starting point for this is Wikipedia: Network Time Protocol, The Official US Time Website and the Time Service Department of the US Naval Observatory.
As mentioned within the Introduction, this document is designed to help configure a Stratum 2 server.
Please review the following as a good reference of available time servers:
http://tf.nist.gov/service/time-servers.html
Within this document, we will use the following time servers:
time-b.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov
time-nw.nist.gov
nist1-dc.WiTime.net
When working with the Microsoft Windows Registry, "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" will be abbreviated as "HKLM" so as to save space. Also, registry paths are will look like this: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Items to be typed, coded, noted, or such look like this: load *,8,1
Button names and such will be bold.
To perform this procedure locally on the PDC emulator, you must be a member of the Administrators group. To perform this procedure from a remote computer, you must be a member of the Domain Admins group.
w32tm /stripchart /computer:target /samples:n/dataonly
Where target specifies the DNS name or IP address of the NTP server that you are comparing the local computer's time against, such as time.windows.com.
Where n specifies the number of time samples that will be returned from the target computer to test basic NTP communication.
w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:peers /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update
Where peers specifies the list of DNS names and/or IP addresses of the NTP time source that the PDC emulator synchronizes from. For example, you can specify time.windows.com. When specifying multiple peers, use a space as the delimiter and enclose them in quotation marks.