Windows Time Is Not Syncing Automatically

glasskuter · Oct 4, 2023

Dru2 said:
you might check that the time / date in the BIOS is correct. And/or you might also need to replace the CMOS (BIOS) battery.

Dru2 is spot on. I've seen the cmos battery cause this more than once.

Mooly · Oct 5, 2023

Stigg said:
It seems like a long shot to me, but I've enabled fast startup in a last ditch effort to try and sort this bug out.

You can only try it. My old Dell Vostro laptop from 2012 (running W11 just fine) and my new Dell Precision have both shown this behaviour.

Steve C · Oct 5, 2023

I had a problem using a banking site this week. A nag screen was shown giving me 10 seconds to login after which I was dropped back to the top level login page. The problem was my Windows 11 time was out by several minutes. All was OK when I synced the time manually. The BIOS time is fine and the CMOS battery is new since this is a new build PC. The problem is Windows 11 has a bug synchronising time.

Stigg · Oct 5, 2023

glasskuter said:
Dru2 is spot on. I've seen the cmos battery cause this more than once.

The thing is, my laptop is only losing small amounts of time over a few days, as it has done from new. And besides that, as far as I know, my laptop doesn't have a removable CMOS battery. Apparently, newer ones don't. I've had mine apart a few times and never saw one.

Computers aren't renowned as being the best time keepers. It usually goes unnoticed if your time is automatically syncing. Even on desktops, I have found many motherboards (especially ASUS) to be poor time keepers.

I can manually sync the time by pressing the "Sync Now" button, so it's can't be a time server issue.

Stigg · Oct 5, 2023

Steve C said:
The problem is Windows 11 has a bug synchronising time.

That appears to be the case, Steve, but it doesn't seem like it affects all computers.
It actually does synchronise using the "Sync Now" button. It just refuses to do it automatically.

Fabler2 · Oct 5, 2023

Using the pool.ntp servers all my laptops synchronise at boot

Stigg · Oct 12, 2023

barreleye said:
I've been using the "Actually Synchronize Time" scheduled task described below since 2011, including in Windows 11:

Make Windows synchronize time more often

www.pretentiousname.com

I've tried everything to fix this issue in Windows 11, so I'm going to admit defeat and use this workaround.

A couple of questions. W32tm.exe is available in C:\Windows\System32 and C:\Windows\SysWOW64. Would it matter whether I used the 32-bit or 64-bit version? If unknown, I might test it myself.

The other question is. Did you change the "Configure For" task setting?

Edit: I changed the "Configure For" to Windows 10. It's the latest Windows operating system available in my Task Scheduler.
I left the rest of the instructions the same. I ran the task manually to test it, and it seemed to work.

I have it running once per day for now. That should be enough.

Alex__ASSR · Oct 12, 2023

I don't know what happened here, or if it was a problem with the bios update, I don't know, but some time ago I noticed this, the time didn't sync and I found this application, it solved my problem.
Time Sync

Time-Sync is a freeware software to synchronize the time of your system. The features of the software are:

Simple self-explanatory software
Configuration in a few steps
Runs as a windows service in the background without any tray-icons
Server & Client version according to RFC standards
Usable in LAN and/or in Internet
Uses system resources economically
Redundant time servers are available
Quick and clean install/uninstall

The special feature about this software is its simplicity. Time-Sync is installed as a service, the configuration is very easy for each user and can be done in a few steps. Up to five redundant time servers can be configured, that means if a time server is not available the next one will be used automatically.

If you wish Time-Sync can configure your Windows-Firewall during the setup. Due to that you can use all functions of Time-Sync immediately. Addionally Time-Sync supports the so-called "command-line" installation that lets you install or update the software via command-line.

barreleye · Oct 12, 2023

Stigg said:
I've tried everything to fix this issue in Windows 11, so I'm going to admit defeat and use this workaround.

A couple of questions. W32tm.exe is available in C:\Windows\System32 and C:\Windows\SysWOW64. Would it matter whether I used the 32-bit or 64-bit version? If unknown, I might test it myself.

The other question is. Did you change the "Configure For" task setting?

I've always used the task exactly as described in the article, so %windir%\system32\w32tm.exe.

It's configured for "Windows 10" on my Windows 11 main machine and Windows 10 file server. Don't know if it matters or not, and I don't remember ever setting it. I exported the current settings, then changed it to Windows 7 and exported a new file, but nothing showed up when I WinDiff'd the two files. I don't see that "Configure For" is saved anywhere in the exported XML files.

Stigg · Oct 12, 2023

barreleye said:
I've always used the task exactly as described in the article, so %windir%\system32\w32tm.exe.

It's configured for "Windows 10" on my Windows 11 main machine and Windows 10 file server. Don't know if it matters or not, and I don't remember ever setting it. I exported the current settings, then changed it to Windows 7 and exported a new file, but nothing showed up when I WinDiff'd the two files. I don't see that "Configure For" is saved anywhere in the exported XML files.

I know when I've created scheduled tasks for backup scripts, the "Configured For" setting provided different functionalities regardless of the operating system it is running on. But for a simple task like this, it may not matter which "Configured For" operating system is selected. The Windows 10 selection seems to be working. I'll keep an eye on it.

barreleye · Oct 12, 2023

Stigg said:
I know when I've created scheduled tasks for backup scripts, the "Configured For" setting provided different functionalities regardless of the operating system it is running on. But for a simple task like this, it may not matter which "Configured For" operating system is selected. The Windows 10 selection seems to be working. I'll keep an eye on it.

Can you find it in the exported XML file? If not, I wonder where it's saved.

Stigg · Oct 12, 2023

barreleye said:
Can you find it in the exported XML file? If not, I wonder where it's saved.

I've exported the task for future use, but I can't find Windows 10 or any reference to a Windows operating system in the XML.
Maybe the "Configured For" setting is not saved. I'd have to import it back in to know if it is or not.

Stigg · Oct 12, 2023

It's done its first automatic time sync, and it works well.

Stigg · Jan 6, 2024

barreleye said:
I've been using the "Actually Synchronize Time" scheduled task described below since 2011, including in Windows 11:

Make Windows synchronize time more often

www.pretentiousname.com

That has been working perfectly since I created the task.

Beaupeep · Sep 2, 2024

Reviving an old thread.

Hello Guys, needed some help with the Task Scheduler "Synchronize Time" task that fails each time it runs with a 0x5 (access denied) code. It is set to run with the Local Service account.

The Windows Time service was unregistered and registered again to no avail. It seems there's an issue with the 'read' and 'execute' permissions for the Local Service account. Can anybody advise me on how to proceed further. This is a relatively fresh install of windows (less than 2 weeks) and I'd hate to reinstall Windows 11 just so this task runs as it should.

Thanks in advance for any help!

PS - The task runs successfully if I change the user account to Local System or the Administrators group. But I hesitate to do so for security reasons.

glasskuter · Sep 2, 2024

Beaupeep said:
The task runs successfully if I change the user account to Local System or the Administrators group. But I hesitate to do so for security reasons.

Does that mean that you use an account without administrative privileges in your daily computering? Some functions will not run when the user is logged into an account without administrative privileges. That's the way Windows is designed.

If you are the owner of the PC, I'm curious exactly what security concerns you have.

Beaupeep · Sep 2, 2024

glasskuter said:
Does that mean that you use an account without administrative privileges in your daily computering? Some functions will not run when the user is logged into an account without administrative privileges. That's the way Windows is designed.

If you are the owner of the PC, I'm curious exactly what security concerns you have.

Yes I am the owner of the PC and my login ID is a part of the Administrators group, the concern I had was the Local Service account has limited privileges compared with an NT_Authority\System account or an Admin account (that's the default set by MS anyway) and I'd rather the time sync task run with only the privileges it was set to use by the Windows installer. Since the Window's Time Sync service is configured to use "Local Service" privileges there is no reason why the time sync task should not execute.

I looked up Task Scheduler fault code 0x5 and it points to lack of permissions to access and/or run a file. Truly cannot fathom why it fails.

TairikuOkami · Sep 2, 2024

Beaupeep said:
Truly cannot fathom why it fails.

MS fails even with basic tasks, I have never got it working. You can use 3rd party apps.

Update Time v1.3

When your Windows time is wrong or keeps changing there is an easy way to fix it "Update Time" is a Portable freeware by Sordum which is the best solution.

www.sordum.org

Beaupeep · Sep 2, 2024

TairikuOkami said:
MS fails even with basic tasks, I have never got it working. You can use 3rd party apps.

Thanks MS has cooked up a half baked implementation in Time Synchronization with no clear answers on why it fails with a 0x5 code. I am seriously considering that utility. The other option is to run the task with elevated (admin) privileges

Beaupeep · Sep 4, 2024

Oh well, instead of continuing to break my head over this I just did a repair install via the Settings app and Windows 11 is all good now. The repair took approximately 45 minutes.

My guess is a couple of BSODs last week due to a corrupted BT driver may have caused this fragile time sync implementation to break.

Windows Time Is Not Syncing Automatically

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