Clock drift on Windows

Question

I\'ve developed a Windows service which tracks business events. It uses the Windows clock to timestamp events. However, the underlying clock can drift quite dramatically (e.

Answer 1

I once wrote a Delphi class to handle time resynchs. It is pasted below. Now that I see the "w32tm" command mentioned by Larry Silverman, I suspect I wasted my time.

unit TimeHandler;

interface

type
  TTimeHandler = class
  private
    FServerName : widestring;
  public
    constructor Create(servername : widestring);
    function RemoteSystemTime : TDateTime;
    procedure SetLocalSystemTime(settotime : TDateTime);
  end;

implementation

uses
  Windows, SysUtils, Messages;

function NetRemoteTOD(ServerName :PWideChar; var buffer :pointer) : integer; stdcall; external 'netapi32.dll';
function NetApiBufferFree(buffer : Pointer) : integer; stdcall; external 'netapi32.dll';

type
  //See MSDN documentation on the TIME_OF_DAY_INFO structure.
  PTime_Of_Day_Info = ^TTime_Of_Day_Info;
  TTime_Of_Day_Info = record
    ElapsedDate : integer;
    Milliseconds : integer;
    Hours : integer;
    Minutes : integer;
    Seconds : integer;
    HundredthsOfSeconds : integer;
    TimeZone : LongInt;
    TimeInterval : integer;
    Day : integer;
    Month : integer;
    Year : integer;
    DayOfWeek : integer;
  end;

constructor TTimeHandler.Create(servername: widestring);
begin
  inherited Create;
  FServerName := servername;
end;

function TTimeHandler.RemoteSystemTime: TDateTime;
var
  Buffer : pointer;
  Rek : PTime_Of_Day_Info;
  DateOnly, TimeOnly : TDateTime;
  timezone : integer;
begin
  //if the call is successful...
  if 0 = NetRemoteTOD(PWideChar(FServerName),Buffer) then begin
    //store the time of day info in our special buffer structure
    Rek := PTime_Of_Day_Info(Buffer);

    //windows time is in GMT, so we adjust for our current time zone
    if Rek.TimeZone <> -1 then
      timezone := Rek.TimeZone div 60
    else
      timezone := 0;

    //decode the date from integers into TDateTimes
    //assume zero milliseconds
    try
      DateOnly := EncodeDate(Rek.Year,Rek.Month,Rek.Day);
      TimeOnly := EncodeTime(Rek.Hours,Rek.Minutes,Rek.Seconds,0);
    except on e : exception do
      raise Exception.Create(
                             'Date retrieved from server, but it was invalid!' +
                             #13#10 +
                             e.Message
                            );
    end;

    //translate the time into a TDateTime
    //apply any time zone adjustment and return the result
    Result := DateOnly + TimeOnly - (timezone / 24);
  end  //if call was successful
  else begin
    raise Exception.Create('Time retrieval failed from "'+FServerName+'"');
  end;

  //free the data structure we created
  NetApiBufferFree(Buffer);
end;

procedure TTimeHandler.SetLocalSystemTime(settotime: TDateTime);
var
  SystemTime : TSystemTime;
begin
  DateTimeToSystemTime(settotime,SystemTime);
  SetLocalTime(SystemTime);
  //tell windows that the time changed
  PostMessage(HWND_BROADCAST,WM_TIMECHANGE,0,0);
end;

end.