Configuring Time in Windows 7 and Win 2008 R2

What's different in Windows 7 related to time and date?

Honestly, the Windows Vista and Windows 7 time and date configuration is very similar. By double-clicking on the taskbar clock you will bring up the Date and Time configuration where you will configure the date, time, timezone, additional clocks, and Internet time.

The only difference that I could find is the reminder for daylight savings time. In Windows Vista, the default is to Remind me one week before this change occurs. With that setting, of course, you would get one week advance notice before the clock "springs forward" or "falls back".



Figure 1: Windows 7 Date and Time Configuration

I do not think that one week notice is very helpful. Surely, you will forget that it is going to change the time one week later. Microsoft must have felt the same way because in Windows 7, they changed this to just Notify me when the clock changes. Thus, you would just be alerted that it has changed. That is fine with me. I do not think that most of us need a one week notification.

Of course, the time and date that daylight savings time occurs in the United States changed in 2009 and the application of DST around the world is very different. Fortunately, Microsoft keeps track of that for us and makes these changes based on our Windows time zone settings.

Windows 2008 - before and after DCPROMO

With a Windows Server, time and date can be very different if you are using it as an Active Directory Domain Controller (ADDC).

A typical Windows 2008 server will, by default, look very much like the Windows 7 machine in Figure 1. All the same tabs, including Internet Time, are present. You can see this in Figure 2, below.



Figure 2: Windows 2008 Server before DCPROMO

However, what happens if you make that same Windows Server a DC?

After running a DCPROMO, if you go back into the same Date and Time tool, you will find that the Internet Time tab is missing. Take a look at this in Figure 3, below.



Figure 3: Windows 2008 Server After DCPROMO

Why is this? Well, when a Windows Server becomes a domain controller the default of obtaining the date & time via NTP from time.windows.com, over the Internet, goes away. The server becomes the root time server for all computers in the domain using Windows SNTP (simple network time protocol). The w32tm service (and CLI command) is what provides this and controls this.

As you can see, on this server that is not a ADDC, the Windows Time service is set to manual and is not started.



Figure 4: Windows Time not started on default server

However, on the Windows Server in Figure 5, the Windows Time server IS started and set to Automatic because this is an Active Directory Domain Controller.



Figure 5: Windows Time running on Domain Controller