How will your Windows computer react to the extra Leap Second added yesterday

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I just read an article somewhere, where it was mentioned that on June 30th 2012, a leap second was be added to our time. On the Leap Second Day, an extra second was added to our clocks at midnight. This was done to match the time shown by the official atomic clocks.

leap second How will your Windows computer react to the extra Leap Second added yesterday

In short, the official time will actually go from June 30th 2012 at 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 instead of directly to July 1 at 00:00:00.

So how will your Windows computer be treating this extra leap second!?

The Windows Time Service maintains the date and time synchronization on all clients and servers in the network.

When the Windows Time service is working as a Network Time Protocol (NTP) client:

It will receive a packet that includes a leap second. Therefore, after the leap second occurs, the NTP client that is running Windows Time service is one second faster than the actual time. This time difference is resolved at the next time synchronization.

When the Windows Time service is working as an NTP server:

There is no way to include a leap second explicitly for the Windows Time service when the service is working as an NTP server. However, if an external NTP server sends a Leap Indicator that has a value of 01 to the Windows Time service NTP server, the Windows NTP server sends the same value to following NTP client, mentions KB909614.

I suppose most of us will not worry too much over it, but for those fastidious one’s – you might want to update the times of your computer, smartphone or your wrist watch!

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Anand aka HappyAndyK is an end-user Windows enthusiast, a Microsoft MVP in Windows Desktop Experience since 2007, and the Admin of TheWindowsClub.com, TheGeeksClub.com & WinVistaClub.com. Creating a System Restore Point before trying out a new software or a tweak is always recommended.