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Wemmer

•Created by Wemmer on 12/22/2023 in #help

Finding time source of Windows system using C# (equivalent of w32tm /query /source)

I want to find the current system's time source directly in C#, basically just like the output of w32tm /query /source does. Due to security reasons, the program may not spawn child processes, so just invoking w32tm and getting the output of it is not allowed and does not work. My initial plan was to read the NtpServer configuration for W32Time from the registry as in:

var w32timeRegistryPath = "SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\W32Time\\Parameters";
using (var w32timeParameters = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(w32timeRegistryPath))
{
    var ntpServerProperty = w32timeParameters.GetValue("NtpServer");
}

var w32timeRegistryPath = "SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\W32Time\\Parameters";
using (var w32timeParameters = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(w32timeRegistryPath))
{
    var ntpServerProperty = w32timeParameters.GetValue("NtpServer");
}

The problem that arises with that approach is that not all systems actually have their time source configured manually like that, but may instead inherit it from their Active Directory domain membership. For those systems the "NtpServer" REG_SZ simply doesn't exist. What I would like to know is if someone is familiar with some other method of getting the equivalent output of w32tm /query /source without spawning a new process to do so. It may effectively be impossible, which I feel like is entirely possible if the necessary API:s to make such a call simply aren't available.

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