Interval timer not counting up

I am new to the Nios II stuff, I have a design with the simple interval timer peripheral. It is not counting. Basically I expected to be able to read the counter value by reading the snapshot registers by using IORD_ALTERA_AVALON_TIMER_SNAPL & IORD_ALTERA_AVALON_TIMER_SNAPH. But I always get 0.

I tried to start the counter from control register and also tried fidling with the options in Qsys for the timer. However, whatever I do in life, I still can't measure the counter counting up at all.

Here is the code I tried last time:

# include "sys/alt_stdio.h"# include "system.h"# include "altera_avalon_timer_regs.h"# include "alt_types.h"# include "stdio.h"
int main()
{ 
  alt_putstr("Hello from Nios II!\n");
  alt_u16 x=0;
  IOWR_ALTERA_AVALON_TIMER_PERIODL(TIMER_0_BASE, 0xffff);
  IOWR_ALTERA_AVALON_TIMER_PERIODH(TIMER_0_BASE, 0xffff);
  /* Event loop never exits. */
  while (1)
  {
      IOWR_ALTERA_AVALON_TIMER_CONTROL(TIMER_0_BASE, 6);
      x=IORD_ALTERA_AVALON_TIMER_PERIODL(TIMER_0_BASE);
      printf("p: %u\n",x);
      x=IORD_ALTERA_AVALON_TIMER_PERIODH(TIMER_0_BASE);
      printf("p: %u\n\n",x);
      x=IORD_ALTERA_AVALON_TIMER_SNAPL(TIMER_0_BASE);
      printf("s: %u\n",x);
      x=IORD_ALTERA_AVALON_TIMER_SNAPH(TIMER_0_BASE);
      printf("s: %u\n",x);
  }
  return 0;
}

If possible could you compile a simple project with timer peripheral. I am feeling lost completely.