Windows Server 2000 VM is losing time

[csindelar]

I have a windows 2000 server file server that is losing time at the rate of 15 minutes an hour. After a certain point, users can't map drives due to the difference it time. I've enabled Time Synchronization in VMware Tools, and disabled time synch in Windows, per a VMware KB article and to no avail.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to fix this?

I have a Windows 2003 file server that seems to functioning just fine.

Help!!!

Thanks

[uslacker99]

How many VMs do you have? How many cpus do you have on the system and how many cpus have you given to all of your VMs? You should be giving them the minimal that they need to run. Rather than use VMware tools time sync, perhaps w32time would be better.

[GBromage]

1) Is the server a domain controller? If not, how does the time compare to the domain controller?

2) Is the time on the ESX host correct?

[alhamad]

You need to make sure that you disabled W32Time on your VM by changing the type in the relevant registry key to "NoSync".

Are you using NTP to synchronize your ESX server? What about the PDC emulator, what method are you using to sync it?

[Rob_Bohmann1]

There was an ESX host patch released recently (last couple of cycles) for time keeping problems on Win2K. Check the patches to see if it applies to the version of ESX that you are running.

I've seen this problem on a couple different Win2K boxes, and I switched back and forth between using the tools for timekeeping and then back to Windows time and that helped. My problems were not ready time / cpu constrained problems. You will want to check that first if you haven't already.

[rsa911]

you may want to try the "Descheduled time accounting" service in your W2K VM : http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_esx_vmdesched.pdf

[francisbandi]

Did you try these - in.vmx file

tools.syncTime = "TRUE"

tools.syncTime.period = "30"

For this parameters to take effect, the patch http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1002082 had to be applied on the ESX server.