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I have a new, OEM installation of Windows 10 that is unable to contact any time servers to sync the system time. Each attempt gives me a timeout error, and pinging the time server times out as well. Here is what I've tried:

  • Checked that the Windows Time service is running and set to automatic startup, and restarted it
  • Disabled my firewall
  • Tried using time.nist.gov, which is currently working according to NIST
  • These steps using w32time, which appeared to succeed but didn't update the time

The time is currently off by 7 hours, which shouldn't be far enough to break Internet syncing.

EDIT: Just tried the same steps on my other computer which boots only Windows (albeit an longer-standing installation of 10), and had the exact same issue, except when I try syncing it simply says "An error occurred when Windows was synchronizing with time.nist.gov." So I highly doubt it is dual boot-related. What is going on?

David Pitchford
  • 73

2 Answers2

7

The issue of the 7-hour difference is caused by dual booting between Windows, which by default uses your local time zone (perhaps US Mountain Time or Krasnoyarsk Time Zone), presumably 7 hours from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), AKA "GMT", and Linux, which by default uses the single UTC time zone. This is further complicated where Daylight Saving Time applies.

Decide which you prefer, UTC or local, and change the other OS to respect that time.

  • To adopt UTC across the board:
    • In Windows, press Windows, type time zone, and select Change the time zone.
    • Select the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time zone.
  • To adopt local time in both systems:
    • In Mint, set the time to your local time and time zone from the control panel.
    • Press CtrlAltT to open Terminal.
    • Type timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock and press Enter.

The issue that time.nist.gov fails to synchronize time might be due to timeserver or network latency. The Windows Club has a nice tutorial on setting the time server and adding other servers through the Registry, which are REG_SZ values at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DateTime\Servers.

Set Windows time server

On my PC, about three-quarters of attempts to sync to time.nist.org failed with, "the timeout period expired." However, after adding pool.ntp.org and selecting it, synchronization succeeded consistently. Perhaps NIST is overloaded?

DrMoishe Pippik
  • 37,887
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Changing DNS and then syncing did the trick for me.

Sanjay
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