Increasing time difference between Windows Server 2003 and time.nist.gov even after explicitly syncing time

I have synced the time of my server to time.nist.gov. This server communicates with a client’s server which is also synced with time.nist.gov.

After noting that we seemed to be out of sync with the time server even after explicit syncing, I set up an hourly batch job to see if my hypothesis is correct and what is our time difference.

I set up the job on Friday and it has already checked the time 50 times. When I first checked on Friday, w32tm utility showed a difference of less than 10 milliseconds. The last check, a couple of hours ago, shows a difference of 20 second.

There have also been 9 cases (in 50 attempts) of error: 0x800705B4 which is a timeout error. The time difference seems to be increasing at the rate of 1 second every hours since Friday, 1/6/2012 5:35 PM EST

I have a Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition set up as a VMWare VM, the timezone is EST. Here’s my w32tm and DOS command that log the sync difference:

w32tm /stripchart /computer:time.nist.gov /samples:1 /dataonly >> D:\timedump.txt

Here are the last 4 entries:

Tracking time.nist.gov [192.43.244.18].
Collecting 1 samples.
The current time is 1/8/2012 10:35:00 AM (local time).
10:35:00, +20.3387625s

Tracking time.nist.gov [192.43.244.18].
Collecting 1 samples.
The current time is 1/8/2012 11:35:00 AM (local time).
11:35:00, +20.4854414s

Tracking time.nist.gov [192.43.244.18].
Collecting 1 samples.
The current time is 1/8/2012 12:35:00 PM (local time).
12:35:00, +20.6239407s

Tracking time.nist.gov [129.6.15.28].
Collecting 1 samples.
The current time is 1/8/2012 1:35:00 PM (local time).
13:35:00, error: 0x800705B4