Server time synchronization tool (NTPClock)

This small tool can set the time of the local machine and the remote server, and achieve time synchronization between the local machine and the server.

The main function of this program (NTPClock) is to read the standard time of the NTP time server through the network, display the standard time on the computer screen, and immediately update the system clock to synchronize with the standard time.

Main appearance description of the program
1.1. Appearance of the application with title bar and menu bar: If connected to the Internet, the standard time is displayed instead of the time on the personal computer.

1.2. App appearance without title bar and menu bar

Please note:
1.2.1. The N in the lower left corner means that the network and server were normal during the previous network connection.

1.2.2. Users can switch between these two display modes by double-clicking the display area with the left mouse button, or they can check "Show Title Bar" in the "Display" menu (or right-click menu).

Basic menu content (entered from the menu bar) (The functions of each menu will be introduced in the next section)

2.1. "Time adjustment" option

2.2. "Display" option

2.3. "About..." option: Show about dialog box

2.4. "Minimize" option: Do not display the icon of this application reduced to the taskbar status area on the desktop.

Right-click quick menu content (right-click the mouse in the window to display the menu)

System task bar (Task bar) display and menu: No items are displayed in the task bar, but an icon will be displayed in the status bar as shown below

Click the icon () with the left mouse button to open or close the application window

Right-click the icon with the mouse. When you release the right-click, you will see the simple function menu as shown below.

Description of the Time Adjustment Dialog Box: Click the "Online Time Adjustment..." option in the menu as follows

You can open the dialog box as shown below to set all parameters related to the network calibration standard time.

5.1 Select network protocol

SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol): RFC 1769, which takes network transmission delay into account and is used to correct the timing results to be displayed to milliseconds.
Time (TCP/UDP): RFC868, regardless of network transmission delay, in seconds.

5.2 NTP standard time server URL setting

Users can right-click the "Down Arrow" as shown below to directly select from the host address list, or they can directly type the host network address (for example: time.stdtime.gov.tw) or IP address (for example: 210.59.157.10) into the field. If you want to save the typed host address to the host address list, please click the "Add" button as shown below.

To delete a URL from the list box, please select the URL first and then click the "Delete" button. To clear all user-set URLs, click the "Default" button.

To query the available NTP standard time server address through the Global Information Network, please click the "Online Query" button


5.3 "Query host time immediately" button

Clicking the "Query Host Time Immediately" button will query the time of the time server according to the URL set in the current time host field. The response standard time is displayed in the application window, and the error between the current system time and the standard time is displayed in the menu as shown below (for example: the system is 1.363 seconds ahead of the standard time). If the system time change method is set to automatically change the system time after each query, click "Query Host Time Now" After pressing the key, the program will change the system time to the standard time after getting the standard time. If the system time change method is set to manually change the system time after each query, the system will only display the standard time but not set the system time.
5.4 Time correction message area:

The time displayed in the message bar is the system time when this message was printed (not standard time)

5.5 Query the host time mode setting area

This application allows users to set up periodic automatic query of the host standard time. Users need to use the horizontal scroll axis in the figure above to select a query interval for automatic time correction, which can range from 20 seconds to 10 days. If you choose to manually query the host standard time, the user must query it through the "Query Host Time Now" button.

5.6 Change system time mode

Select "Automatically change the system time after each query", so that the program will automatically modify the system time after each query, and the user does not need to manually modify the system time.
Please note:
Whenever the user selects the "Automatically change system time every time" option, two system options will change slightly.
1. The option "Change system time (x.xxx seconds)" in the quick menu and standard menu cannot be operated manually. Time adjustment and system time change can be completed in one action.
2. Since the system clock is corrected immediately after every time correction through the network, the error between the system and the standard time is basically a very small value. "Changing the system time by correcting the time difference" does not make much sense, so this function button is cancelled.
5.7 "Reset time adjustment interface" button:
The opportunity to use this button is when the calibration network signal sent by the machine is lost or the signal responded by the calibration host is lost, the user can press this button to reset the network interface. In addition, when the standard time server URL specified by the user is wrong (the Domain Name server cannot find its IP address), or when there is no network connection, the user can also click this button to reset the network interface.
5.8 "End settings" button:
The user clicks this button to exit the network time setting dialog box and save all changed settings.
5.9 This field displays the time zone data currently set by the system. An incorrect time zone setting will cause the time adjustment result to be several hours off. You can use the "Change system time and zone..." button to change it.
5.10 "Current system time" displays the time maintained in the CMOS of the personal computer system (only displayed to seconds), and the difference from the standard time is displayed in the data in the previous column (for example: the picture below shows that the system is behind by 24.140 seconds, which means the standard time is approximately 11:31:44 seconds)

If you want to change the system time to standard time, you need to press the "Change system time to correct time difference" button. If the time zone setting is wrong or you want to manually modify the system date or time, the user needs to press the "Change system time and zone..." button, and the following screen will be displayed.
5.11 As shown in the figure below, the user only needs to place the mouse on any button or option in this dialog box and wait for more than 0.5 seconds. The program will automatically prompt the function of this button, such as "Select SNTP as the school communication protocol" in the figure below.

Program main menu function description
6.1 "Time Calibration" function option: After pressing it, the menu shown below will be displayed.

6.1.1 "Query standard time" function option: This function has the same function as "Query host time immediately" in 5.3. It starts the system to query network time.
6.1.2 "Change system time (system ahead/behind xxxxx seconds)" function option: The same function as 5.9 "Change system time by correcting time difference" button, use the standard time of the last query and correction to correct the system time of this machine

6.1.3 "Network time adjustment setting" function option: This option activates the network time adjustment setting dialog box (5). The user can set the parameters of the network time adjustment.

6.1.4 "Set system time zone..." function option: The button function is the same as 5.9 "Change system time and zone..." and can start the setting program provided by the system (see 5.9)

6.1.5 "End" function option: End this application

6.2 "Display" function option: After pressing, the menu shown below will be displayed.

6.2.1 "Date and time format settings..." dialog box

6.2.2 "Font selection..." dialog box

6.2.3 "Show title bar" function option: has the same function as double-clicking the left mouse button in the display area

6.2.4 "Top of Desktop" function option: After selecting, the window will always remain at the top of the desktop and will not be covered by other applications.

6.2.5 "Place in upper left/lower left/upper right/lower right corner" function option: you can move the display window to the four corners of the screen to maintain the display size of the window

6.3 "About..." function option: After pressing, the About dialog box shown below will be displayed.

6.4. "Minimize" option: Do not display the icon that reduces the application to the taskbar status area on the desktop.

Right-click mouse quick menu function description

7.1 "Query standard time" option: as explained in 6.1.1

7.2 "Change system time (system time behind/ahead of xxx seconds)" option: as explained in 6.1.2

7.3 "Network time adjustment setting..." option: as explained in 6.1.3

7.4 "Set system time zone..." option: as explained in 6.1.4

7.5 "Display settings..." option: as explained in 6.2

7.6 "Minimize" option: as explained in 6.4

7.7 "About..." option: as explained in 6.3.1

7.8 "End" option: End this application

Description of the right-click quick function menu of the taskbar icon

8.1 "Query standard time" option: as explained in 6.1.1

8.2 "Change system time (system time behind/ahead of xxx seconds)" option: as explained in 6.1.2

8.3 "End" option: End this application

Online Time Adjustment Procedure Instructions
9.1 Introduction to Network Time Calibration Timing

There are basically a few simple steps to read the standard time via a network (LAN or WAN) connection to an NTP server:

First, the program will perform a "Query" action to query the Domain Name server host for the IP address of the host specified by the user (eg: clock.stdtime.gov.tw) (eg: 210.59.157.30);

If the TCP protocol is used, a "Connect" action will be performed to establish a connection with the school host;

"Send": In this step, the program prepares a network message packet containing a message requesting a return time, and then the program begins to wait for a response from the remote server;

"Read response message (Receive)": Read the requested time information from the response message packet.

9.2 Program status display
On the left side of the window we have

Q stands for "Querying host address"

C stands for "Connecting" (this step is only available for Time/TCP)

S stands for "Sending message"

W stands for "Waiting for response"

It is usually easier to delay in the three states of Q, C and W. If it is delayed in Q, it is often because the Domain Name server cannot be contacted, or the IP address information of the specified time server cannot be found on DNS. At this time, you must wait patiently. The DNS query will automatically end in about two minutes. Please find out the URL of the host or check the network connection and settings before trying again. If there is a delay in C or W, it may be that the time server is too busy or the network traffic is too congested and communication packets are lost. At this time, the user can wait for about 25 seconds. If there is still no response, the program will automatically reset the communication interface. Regardless of the delay, the user can directly press the "Reset Communication Interface" button to force the system to end the current action and reset the communication interface.

If the program cannot correctly correct the time from the network, it will display F in the lower left corner of the window (as shown in the figure below). Therefore, the F flashing on the screen means that the last query failed and the program did not obtain the standard time.

If the online time adjustment is successful, N will be displayed in the window as shown below. If you see N, it means that the previous online time adjustment was successfully completed.

Correction time operation example
10.1 Set up automatic network time adjustment and correct system time

10.1.1 Select the "Online time adjustment..." function option

10.1.2 Use the scroll axis to set the automatic query interval, as shown above, set it to 30 minutes

10.1.3 Select to automatically change the system time after each query

10.1.4 Set the time correction host address, as shown above clock.stdtime.gov.tw

10.1.5 Select the host time query method to automatically query the host standard time periodically

10.1.6 Press the "End settings" button

10.2 Manually correct the time and let the program automatically modify the system time

10.2.1 Select the "Online Time Adjustment..." function option

10.2.2 Select to automatically change the system time after each query

10.2.3 Set time correction host address

10.2.4 Select the host time query method to manually query the host standard time

10.2.5 Press the "End settings" button

10.2.6 Click the "Query Standard Time" function option in the system menu or right-click menu

program settings
Please use the registry editing program regedit provided by the Windows system to query or modify, as shown in the figure below. The settings of this program are stored in the machine code HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Software / ChungHua Telecom Co., Ltd / NTPCLOCK / Settings
The content is shown in the figure below. The program will automatically make basic settings when NTPClock is executed for the first time. Every subsequent modification made in the program dialog box will be automatically stored here.