diff --git a/xds/src/main/java/io/grpc/xds/ControlPlaneClient.java b/xds/src/main/java/io/grpc/xds/ControlPlaneClient.java
index 5f013bfd3b..3ce2815d9d 100644
--- a/xds/src/main/java/io/grpc/xds/ControlPlaneClient.java
+++ b/xds/src/main/java/io/grpc/xds/ControlPlaneClient.java
@@ -392,7 +392,9 @@ final class ControlPlaneClient {
         // has never been initialized.
         retryBackoffPolicy = backoffPolicyProvider.get();
       }
-      // Need this here to avoid tsan race condition in XdsClientImplTestBase.sendToNonexistentHost
+      // FakeClock in tests isn't thread-safe. Schedule the retry timer before notifying callbacks
+      // to avoid TSAN races, since tests may wait until callbacks are called but then would run
+      // concurrently with the stopwatch and schedule.
       long elapsed = stopwatch.elapsed(TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS);
       long delayNanos = Math.max(0, retryBackoffPolicy.nextBackoffNanos() - elapsed);
       rpcRetryTimer = syncContext.schedule(
diff --git a/xds/src/test/java/io/grpc/xds/XdsClientImplTestBase.java b/xds/src/test/java/io/grpc/xds/XdsClientImplTestBase.java
index 9f1be942ea..fe502a2303 100644
--- a/xds/src/test/java/io/grpc/xds/XdsClientImplTestBase.java
+++ b/xds/src/test/java/io/grpc/xds/XdsClientImplTestBase.java
@@ -3726,9 +3726,12 @@ public abstract class XdsClientImplTestBase {
   }
 
   @Test
-  public void sendToNonexistentHost() throws Exception {
+  public void sendToNonexistentServer() throws Exception {
     // Setup xdsClient to fail on stream creation
-    XdsClientImpl client = createXdsClient("some.garbage");
+    // The Windows CI takes ~11 seconds to resolve "doesnotexist.invalid.". That seems broken, since
+    // it should take no I/O, but let's limit ourselves to IP literals and hostnames in the hosts
+    // file. Assume localhost doesn't speak HTTP/2 on the finger port
+    XdsClientImpl client = createXdsClient("localhost:79");
     client.watchXdsResource(XdsListenerResource.getInstance(), LDS_RESOURCE, ldsResourceWatcher);
     verify(ldsResourceWatcher, Mockito.timeout(5000).times(1)).onError(ArgumentMatchers.any());
     assertThat(fakeClock.numPendingTasks()).isEqualTo(1); //retry