I'm running Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise of my server. Overkill? Probably.

Anyway, the system clock seems to drift every day by a few minutes. If I go into the date and time settings and sync it with an internet time provider it goes back to the correct time. It is set to automatically keep in sync but it doesn't seem to.

It's annoying because it makes the system time of Apache/PHP wrong. Could the hardware/BIOS clock be out and it keeps syncing with that?

Can I change by BIOS time without rebooting and attaching a screen and keyboard?

Where is the server located? Is it next to a neutron star, because the gravity of those things can do funny stuff to clocks.

There's a lot of stuff packed into my spare room but I don't think there's enough there for it to act like a neutron star.

Is it the CMOS battery? I have vague recollections that a failing CMOS battery might do that.

System is fairly new (no more than 2 years old) but I should check it.

Looking at this gravity map, there does seem to be a slight dip across northern England. Could be the source of your problems?

I read somewhere that CMOS batteries are particularly prone to neutron start explosions. Viz, I think it was.

Huh, I was going to ask if network time was being blocked in your router, but then I saw you said you can manually make it sync.

So I dunno, I'd go with Koss on this one!

Just had to resync manually again. About a minute out.

I've been having clock problems with xp not syncing with the default (MS?) internet time server. I set it to the other server and at least it got the time right. I dunno if it'll hold or not.

So it's been happening continuously since I posted last but last night I changed the server to the MS/Windows one and this morning it was about 2 1/2 hours out. But not exactly so it wouldn't be a time zone issue.

Resynced it, totally odd.