Windows 2003 Time service

2004-01-13

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003

Summary

Need to provide a NTP/SNTP Time Service to some newly acquired Wireless Access points.

Microsoft lists the registry key (LocalNTP) to enable this feature - see the following for full details:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223184

http://www.gudeads.com/english/main-windows-ntp.htm

This works fine under Windows 2000 server but fails under Windows 2003. Confirmed that the service has started, the port is active and receiving packets but refuses to respond. A W32TIME debug log file shows the following message is the result of a test from another system using W32TM.EXE. The reported error is:

Ignoring packet invalid mode combination (in:3 out:0)

Is this a known bug in Windows 2003 Server and is there a fix ?

Solution

Need to check the registry keys for NTP under Windows Server 2003

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/proddocs/deployguide/242310.asp

Allownonstandmodecombinations etc.

One in the same section of the Technet Article was not set to "enabled", this was set and all started to work.
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