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Came in early today while the office was empty to install the MS updates that were hanging out there for my Svr 08 domain controller. Nothing out of the ordinary. Installed, rebooted, all of a sudden the entire effing network is not connecting. Can’t connect to ANY of my servers and keep getting message about wrong date and time. Oh and the monitor for my kvm stopped working, so yeah, couldn’t see any of the consoles.

about an hour later with almost all my hair pulled out, every user PO’d, people just irritated, I notice that the domain controller’s date was changed to NOVEMBER 23, 2011!!! AND, every friggin workstation was changed to that date too. And every email that came in during that time was changed to that date.

Ummmmm WTH??? Why would it change the date and WHY would it change it to 11/23/2011?

OMG, what an UNGODLY frustrating horrible day. And… its the day before I leave for my wedding and honeymoon. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

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What do you use for your time server (NTP)?

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That is a sign that you should not get married.

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Tip for the future… dont touch nothing before you go on vacation about a week out +/- a day or two.

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You wouldn’t happen to be in Yemen, would you? =-)

11/23/2011 After 11 months of protests in Yemen, The Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh signs a deal to transfer power to the vice president, in exchange for legal immunity.

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James9942 wrote:

What do you use for your time server (NTP)?

Truthfully, an outside consultant set up the new server. I have no idea what is used for time server.

After what happened today, consultant set the DC to get the time from an internet source 4 times a day to keep the clock in sync. Says it will fix the issue I experienced.

That wonderful, but why in the (you know what) did it friggin change the date and time after a reboot to begin with? That makes absolutely no sense. Before this I had Sr 03, and rebooted once a month and it NEVER changed the date to a year earlier. (shaking head)

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wishes !

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On a side note…early congratulations on your upcoming wedding and honeymoon. Many years of happiness to you both :slight_smile:

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Whatever it looked at for the network time protocol (ntp) told it the wrong date/time. That sucks…

Ditto that: don’t do anything on Friday or right before a leave of absence. EVER.

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Were one of the updates that you applied related to the time and date service?

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Microsoft Magics we can’t expect how there S/W will play.

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And congrats, by the way.

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Early congrats on your wedding! I 100% totally agree with James especially if you are the only IT support at your organization. As for your issue, maybe your CMOS battery is going out? just an idea.

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Syn1161 wrote:

…After what happened today, consultant set the DC to get the time from an internet source 4 times a day to keep the clock in sync. Says it will fix the issue I experienced…

Reason to strictly monitor consultants. Insure everything is documented. As time permits, do have a checklist to re-evaluate work performed, and verify there are not unexpected extras.

NTP is a critical service, and having it accurate and locked down is important for security.

Syn1161 wrote:

…the day before I leave for my wedding and honeymoon…

Congrats!

( psst, hear they serve fermented beverages at those things. Go ahead and take a couple extra. )

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I’ve had a similar experience where a on a reboot the server got it’s time from the hardware clock which had drifted horribly to the point where it was too far off for Kerberos tickets (and therefore mapped drives, logins, etc.) to fail. Set your PDC to use a valid time source such as servers in the us.pool.ntp.org pool and any other DC to time sync using DOMAINHIRE which will sync to the PDC. I still have three failed Windows Server Backup failures logged in my Windows PDC server manager which will not go away until sometime in 2013 when their failure dates become stale. They failed because the time difference between the server and the target NAS was too great by about one year.

Congrats

BTW, ++1 on not changing things before a vacation.

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I agree with A. Chavez. I bet the CMOS battery went out and when the server rebooted, the thing was set back to the default date for the BIOS. All the workstations are looking to the domain controller for the time. So when it came back up with the wrong time, it carried on and served that incorrect time to the workstations…

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We had an issue with the outside NTP that our PDC set its time against. We have traveled backward and forward in time until I choose a different NTP. Changing computer time was easy enough but it reset and locked out all our users door codes to the employee entrance. If I did not have the extra key to a non-mag locked door, we would have been doomed.

I disagree with an earlier post about this is a sign not to get married. All servers and computers are bratty kids and if their parent or parents will be gone, they will act up and something will go down.

Con-grads on the marriage and enjoy your honeymoon. My wife and I are celebrating our fifth honeymoon this November.

The secret? Never believe that the honeymoon has to end and protect your marriage above all else and the honeymoon will never end…

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I’ve had exactly the same issue with Win2003.

I’m curious - does your consultant use the Windows Time service? Or another NTP program?

On my servers I use a utility called AnalogX TimeSync (aka ‘ATS’) and disable the Windows Time service. And once or twice the dates went a little “nuts”.

The reason: I RDP into each of my servers and sometimes I go in with and without mstsc’s /admin option. Which means that each time any Startup apps start twice!

So in my case, it means that ATS got confused and overlapped syncs. I’ve since written a script that starts the ATS application only once. Since then, I’ve had no issue.

So I am guessing you have some NTP app that is interfering with time syncing of your servers.

And, I wish you and your husband-to-be the very happiest of times. :slight_smile:

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Best wishes, and congrats to the lucky fella :slight_smile:

I’d check that CMOS battery.

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I’ve had this happen to me the last two times I applied windows updates as well. We have a mix of 2003 and 2008 but the 2003 servers are the DC’s not sure what is causing it yet. I have run windows updates and not had this problem before but it happen the last two update tuesdays when i applied the updates.