Re: Are these Windows XP clients beyond hope?
- From: Neil Trotter <neil_trotter@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 12:24:00 +0100
In article <_esXe.111194$G8.44649@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, David J
Taylor said:
> Neil Trotter wrote:
> []
> > All machines are keeping good time except 2 of the windows XP clients
> > at one of the sites, and these are drifting wildly. Since all the
> > config files are similar, and 2 other XP clients on the same network
> > (with identical config files) are staying sync'd, is this just a case
> > of hopelessly bad hardware clocks, or is there something else I can
> > try?
>
> Not sure I can help any more than Danny did, but the output from my own XP
> machine is here:
>
> http://www.david-taylor.myby.co.uk/mrtg/odin_ntp.html
In fact, you already did help, David. I visited your site yesterday,
and still have a window open on it :-) I downloaded NTPMonitor to give
me an overview, and am planning to read more today.
> and it seems stable even when running Windows Media Player or Real Player
> (or perhaps even QuickTime). The only suggestion I can make are:
>
> - are the clients which are drifting wildy perhaps portable PCs or systems
> which have a variable clock rate? This could throw NTP.
They are "standard" PCs, specs follow. I believe that either of these
boards may be used for overclocking, but I assembled the PCs myself, and
prefer reliability over speed, so I know they are running at the design
frequency. Is it possible that e.g. a clock-multiplier setting might
cause problems? I had thought this didn't alter the speed of the clock
itself, but am not an overclocking hobbyist, so don't know too much
about such things.
Bad machine #1:
Antec 350W PSU
Asus A7N8X Deluxe SKT A NForce2 Chipset Motherboard VER: 2.0
AMD ATHLON XP2500+ 333MHZ FSB 512 L2 Cache Barton CPU - OEM
Crucial 512 DDR333 PC2700 DIMM
160GB 8Mb Cache SATA OEM Hard Disk Drive
Radeon 9200SE 64MB DDR TV-Out 8xAGP Retail Box
Bad machine #2:
Antec 300w PSU
Asus A7N8X-VM nForce2 (Socket A) Micro ATX Motherboard (MB-032-AS)
AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2600+ 333FSB (Socket A) CPU - Retail
512MB ? CT6464Z335 DDR PC2700 CL=2.5 Non-parity
Samsung SpinPoint P SP0802N 80GB ATA-133 2MB Cache - OEM
VGU (onboard)
The A7N8X has an identical twin "sister" (component-wise) on the
network, which keeps good time. That is to say, all components were
purchased at the same time from the same vendor, so I *assume* they are
identical, though there is obviously *some* variable factor in the mix,
be it hardware or configuration.
> - if you do a ntpq -p on those systems, do they appear to be in sync?
No, they don't; this is how I was monitoring them.
> - are the systems set to use DMA for disk and CD/DVD access?
I'm unable to check the BIOS settings for now, as the machines are
remote, and in use, but I will check this. I believe they will be, as I
*think* this is the default, and I have not changed this. I will check
this when I can.
> The general view is that XP can provide a good stable time.
Ah, hope :-)
Thanks for the suggestions, David.
--
Neil
Alternative Network Directory
http://www.and-world.com
http://forum.and-world.com
.
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