I just installed Mandrake 10, and it says it's 7:44 AM which is a lie since it's 2:44 PM. During setup I've set it to synch time with NTP, but so far it's not working. Why is it several hours behind, and how should I got about fixing it?

I know about the 'date' command, but I am afraid that if I change that, my BIOS clock will get screwed up.

NTP tries to access the net suring boot.
If you have a dial up modem it won't be able to connect during boot, or, if you have a firewall running which doesn't have the NTP protocol as allowed then it also won't be able to access the net.
You can configure the time while connected to the net and it will do it's thing.
Or, there is an app called rdate that comes with mandrake, if it's not installed you can install it from the command line with urpmi
urpmi rdate
them run rdate -s xxx
where xxx is name of time server
I use tock.august.net, works in the uk, but I don't know where you are.
I haven't found this screws up the hardware clock.

I live in the USA

I need this problem fixed, even NTP is one hour behind and it screws up my BIOS clock so it screws up the clock in any other OS I have installed.

connect to the net
right click on clock and choose "Adjust Date & Time"

have you got the right time zone selected?
change it if not

or
deselect "Enable NTP"
and then select it again
it should go out and connect and sort the time out straight away

Yes it is set to the right timezone, and no disabling and re-enabling NTP does not work. And it still screws up the BIOS clock.

have you got the NTP protocol blocked by a firewall?

I do not think so.

then i am stumped for an answer

I had time problems with mandrake 10, but they seem ok now,
i enabled NTP but it didn't help till i realised I had the NTP protocol blocked in guarddog
I reinstalled mandrake yesterday and this time round I have no time problems at all

Have you tried simply DESELECTING the option to set the hardware clock to GMT at the time you call up the Time Server in mandrake Control Center?

i installed mandrake 10 today on another new pc and had more time problems

when I sleected UTC the time corected itself (I had NTP enabled already)