Time change issue

[AkamaiAloha]

Hey all,

I have legacy client:

Aloha 4.26x
3 Terminals win98 FOH
NT 4.0 BOH

They called Sunday with the Synchronization of files issue on the BOH, which I understand is generally traced to read-only files in the FOH directories where the time stamp is not update. We got around that issue by doing the usual rigamarole, but we've moved on to something a little more perplexing.

The user claims the time is an hour ahead of the actual time on the BOH. On at least a few of the terminals, I know we had placed a batch file in the start menu that would sync with the BOH on bootup. This still didn't work. The only other time I'd seen this, was when the time was wrong in the BIOS on one of the FOH machines. Over the phone, I had the client manually check the BIOS. Sure enough, it was wrong on almost every terminal (if not all)... an hour ahead of the actual time on one, and hour behind the actual time on the other, etc. We adjusted them to the proper time, and all of the sudden everything was good... we had the right time!

About 3 hours later, the client called back and said the time was an hour ahead again. I am at a loss now. I had them check the time on the BOH again, then uncheck synctime on the BOH, just for the heck of it, not sure what it would do. Nothing seemed to help. I asked if there had been anytime of problem or refresh in between the time it was working properly and then OFF again, and they said no. To my knowledge, adjust for daylight savings is check on all terminals (not that I thought this would matter, since daylight savings is over).

Aside from something goofy like user error (for example, maybe the client changed the time in one the BIOS and forgot to save it), can anyone think of anything else? It's really starting to get on my nerves, and since it's an hour away, I really don't want to immediately drive out there. FYI-I have no dial in access here, which is making it difficult.

Thanks!

 

[DTSMAN]

Did you reboot the server? Sometimes this fixes it. If this still doesn't work, reboot the server with the time zone set to Indiana east, this time zone does not use the daylight savings. You may have to do the terminals also but not always, after you get it working you can change it back to your time zone if you want to.
I did it 3 times past Sunday and it worked for me.

Bo

Kentucky phone support-
"Mash the Kentrol key and hit scape."

 

[AkamaiAloha]

Thanks, Bo. It was bizzare how the FOH kept moving the time ahead an hour, even when I told it NOT to adjust the time automatically, and set it to the proper time. It was clearly an FOH issue--the terminals were flatout ignoring the BOH time. I could set it ahead, I could set it behind, refresh the system, and FOH terminal time would not change.

I did notice that one of the terminals did not have the batch file to sync the time with the back office on startup, and it was the master terminal when I got there yesterday evening. So, I added the batch file and changed the time to Indiana like you said, changed the time at the BIOS level, and all is good so far.

This site was always the most problematic, everytime. Maybe this will fix it permanently. Next time change, they can manually change it, I am not switching it back to EST. But it was NEVER this bad--how stupid does that make you look? When you can't get the computers to read the correct time?
Glad it's over with--for now. Thanks.

 

[RokStar]

Being from AZ we had this problem all the time. Even with SYNCTIME=TRUE and
NODST=TRUE

Almost 99% of the time, it was a single PC with a different timezone than the rest.
So you are on the right track. But you can safely change the timezones back to EST. Just be absolutely positive that it is changed on every single terminal. i.e. do it yourself, then triple check them yourself.
Even with Indiana set on the server, if the master terminal is not Indiana, you will most likely have the exact same problem in 6 months.