While preparing some 200 non-domain-registered Windows 7 systems as POS systems, we came across a couple of dead BIOS batteries. Time on these machines would start 1-1-2009 every time and while you could forcibly setup the correct time by pushing a couple of buttons inside of Windows, the question arose if it would be possible to correct time automatically. Well, turns out: it is.<\/p>\n
The Internet is full of advice about how to proceed. Write a batch file, run w32time with a couple of well thought parameters, run w32time from the task scheduler – and so on. I even thought of this myself: when you know your systems start at 2009-01-01 00:00, it’s easy to schedule a couple of tasks for 2009-01-01 00:01, :02, :03 etcetera to correct the time with the w32time utility.<\/p>\n
However, this felt wrong and luckily, there is a far better solution.<\/p>\n
The first thing you should know is, that the w32time service does not start when a Windows 7 system isn’t part of a domain<\/strong>. That’s by design and it’s explained in kb2385818<\/a>. Fixing this seems to require two commands: the first one disables the trigger to disable w32time for non-domain-registered systems; the second one enables a trigger to start w32time whenever the network becomes active:
\nsc triggerinfo w32time delete
\nsc triggerinfo w32time start\/networkon stop\/networkoff<\/code>
\nThe article seems to erroneously state that the first command will activate w32time to start automatically, but as far as my experience counts, it won’t.<\/p>\n