Change Windows clock time synchronization interval

Windows has an option synchronizing it’s time against a time server. The time server returns a very accurate time. In order to synchronize your machine with a time server you need double click on the clock that appears on the task bar. On Windows 2003 server you should see something like this:

Then move to the tab named: “Internet Time”:

Make sure that the check box: “Automatically synchronize with an Internet time server” is checked.
Usually, we would like to synchronize several servers on our farm to have almost exactly the same time. For this, the default synchronization interval of Windows is not enough, since it takes only a few days to start seeing differences.
Changing the default synchronization interval can be done by changing the value of the key: “SpecialPollInterval” in the registry of the machine.
This is the complete path of the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient\SpecialPollInterval

In order to change the synchronization interval to 1 hour, set the DWORD value to: e10 which is 3600 in hexadecimal. The value is in seconds, therefore 3600 gives 1 hour.
This is how it looks on regedit:

After updating the value in the registry, press the “Update Now” on the “Date and Time Properties” window, and make sure, that the “Next synchronization” shows you a next update time of an hour.