W32Time client does not fail over to secondary NTP servers by FQDN

View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q285641

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SYMPTOMS

If you place multiple Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers by IP address in the NTPServer registry value, Windows tries each listed address. If you specify the NTP servers by DNS name (or the FQDN), Windows loops through the list once for each server, but attempts to connect to the first name in the list each time instead of trying each name.

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RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows 2000. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

260910 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/260910/ ) How to Obtain the Latest Windows 2000 Service Pack

The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

   Date       Time    Version        Size   File name
   ----------------------------------------------------
   3/12/2001  02:43p  5.0.2195.3358  47,888  W32time.dll
   3/12/2001  02:43p  5.0.2195.3358  56,080  W32tm.exe

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STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Windows 2000 Service Pack 3.

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MORE INFORMATION

NTP servers can be configured from the command line using net time. The syntax for net time is:

NET TIME
[\\computername | /DOMAIN[:domainname] | /RTSDOMAIN[:domainname]][/SET]
[\\computername] /QUERYSNTP
[\\computername] /SETSNTP[:ntp server list]

Where [:ntp server list] is a delimited list of time servers, listed by IP address or NetBIOS/FQDN name, whose members are separated by a space only. Do not use commas (,) or semicolons (;). When adding entries to the registry directly, each IP address or NetBIOS/FQDN name must be separated by a space.

For additional information about how to obtain a hotfix for Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

265173 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/265173/ ) The Datacenter Program and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server product

For additional information about how to install multiple hotfixes with only one reboot, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

296861 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296861/ ) How to install multiple Windows updates or hotfixes with only one reboot

For additional information about how to install Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 hotfixes at the same time, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

249149 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249149/ ) Installing Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 hotfixes

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