Updating Windows Time Servers

✏️ Summary

So maybe it’s my environment or whatever, but I’m constantly having issues with the default Windows time servers updating. At first one might think this isn’t really that big of a deal. However, not having an accurate date and time can cause a lot of problems.

• For example, when I was trying to connect with friends in an XBox live party it would continue fail. At first, I thought it was a variety of other issues. After a bit of trouble shooting, I noticed my system time was way off. Then when I tried to update it, it just kept failing with both of the defaults time.windows.com and time.nist.gov.
• Another example was when I tried to run a basic utility application that authenticates with AWS. It also failed due to the timestamp being off during credential signing. Probably the same issue that caused the XBox party to fail.

🛠️ How-to

• Launch the registry editor by using the keyboard shortcut Windows Key + R to launch the run command or simply just hit the Windows Key. Then type regedit and enter. Then run the Registry Editor as Administrator.

  

• Next navigate to the following path

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DateTime\Servers

  You’ll see the default time servers time.windows.com and time.nist.gov.

  

• Now were going to update the time servers to companies that are more likely to have stable infrastructure. I think Cloudflare is an awesome company and a fantastic DNS provider. Then Google is pretty legit, so they are also unlikely to fail. So we just need to update the values as shown below to make sure we have time.cloudflare.com and time.google.com.

  

• Then once we close regedit, we can check out our time settings to make sure everything is good to go.

  

📨 Questions, Issues, and Suggestions?

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