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Unofficial Win2K Daylight Saving Time Fix
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Jan 11, 2007 02:29 PM
from the it's-about-time dept.
from the it's-about-time dept.
Saturn2003a writes "Microsoft has stated that they will not be offering a patch for the new US Daylight Saving Time for Windows 2000 and earlier. Only customers with an extended support agreement can get a Hotfix from Microsoft. To get around this, IntelliAdmin has created an unofficial patch (source code provided) that will fix Daylight Saving Time on Windows 2000 and Windows NT machines."
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Hardware: Is Daylight Saving Shift Really Worth It? 652 comments
Krishna Dagli writes "Two Ph.D. students at the University of California at Berkeley say that Daylight Saving Shift will not do any good or create any energy savings. We are already spending money for software upgrades in the name of saving energy and after reading following article I wonder has congress really studied the impact of DST shift? " I also read some back story on the concept; OTOH, I found TiVo's suggestions that I manually change everything on my Series 1 device to be somewhat...insulting.
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My fix? (Score:3, Funny)
I haven't had an issue yet.
Re:My fix? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:My fix - avoid vendors that act like assholes. (Score:5, Insightful)
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But they're still an asshole. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that W2K is broken that makes M$ an asshole in all of this. It's that they have a patch available for those who have paid for extended support, but they won't release it for the general public.
Since the cost to produce the patch has already been absorbed by M$, the only reason to withhold the patch is to make people frustrated with W2K to encourage them to upgrade. When you can readily fix something, but you don't, so that people will upgrade, well, then, your an asshole.
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Re:But they're still an asshole. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re Broken (Score:4, Interesting)
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No, Windows' time code ACTUALLY IS broken (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, it sets the hardware clock to local time rather than GMT, so it breaks other OSs when dual-booting. Second, it puts file timestamps in local time (at least on FAT), so if you change timezones your timestamps can get screwed up. And screwed up timestamps can actually break stuff -- backups, make, etc.
Re:I'll stretch it (Score:5, Insightful)
And now for another episode of, "Good Idea, Bad Idea"
Seriously... downloading patches from a website operated by the government?
Parent
Re:My fix - avoid vendors that act like assholes. (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah, right (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, right (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Yeah, right (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wasn't that film about Slashdot effect? I remember how all the hardware gets torpedoed and stops functioning for awhile.
Re:Yeah, right (Score:4, Informative)
It also fixes lots of other problems with DOS that people have struggled with.
Yes, DOS is still useable and in use today by lots of important devices.
Parent
and it's.... (Score:4, Funny)
(Sorry...couldn't resist)
Re:and it's.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with not adjusting the clock is that there are forces that are working to move the clock both forward and backward. In the book "Spring Forward - The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time" by Michael Downing, he covers the issue. The back cover of the book lists those who support and oppose Daylight Saving Time (DST).
Some of those in support of DST:
Some of those opposed to DST:
Well... (Score:3, Informative)
Fortunately, the corporate users with a domain will still have a DC as an authoritative time source, and can just adjust the time on one server to keep everyone else in sync.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
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clocks (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for a large clock company and there sending out many (20+) people throughout the country to reprogram the clock controllers so that there DST tables can be automatically updated in the future, nothing like more summertime
It's not like there are no other options (Score:5, Informative)
This knowledge base article [microsoft.com] from Microsoft describes how to use the Time Zone Editor utility (which you can download from that page) to adjust time zone settings.
If you need to update several computers, it also describes which registry keys to export. You can then import those registry keys in a logon script or whatever.
It's not like people/companies running Win2k are SOL.
Re:It's not like there are no other options (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot has enough trouble with grammar without you confusing things. :-P
They can each be both, but the typical cases are "affect" as a verb, and "effect" as a noun. Linky [google.com].
Parent
On the subject of gammer...it's not "savings" (Score:3, Informative)
It's, "Daylight Saving [wikipedia.org] Time," not, "Daylight Savings Time." It's not like we're, "savings teh 1337 daylights." (daylight is singular)
At least the summary had it right.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Affect" is usually a verb meaning "to influence".
"Effect" is usually a noun meaning "result".
There is a noun meaning for "affect" and a verb meaning for "effect", but they're uncommon. So you go ahead and come up with your clever term, and I'll come up with one for when one uses it inappropriately.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's my date in a box (Score:2, Funny)
Step 2: Change the time on your box
Step 3: Make her open the box.
It's my date in a box. Date in a box bay-beh.
Not Entirely Stuck (Score:3, Informative)
DST in some countries changes every year... (Score:5, Informative)
holiday happens to occur in the lunar calendar, so every year in our data centers we either
change the clocks manually, or rely on the Domain Controller on changing the time for
the servers and workstations in the domain.
And we don't complain to Microsoft for not providing us a fix for it.
-D
So, the Y2K problem finally shows up (Score:5, Funny)
There IS an official fix (Score:5, Funny)
Move to Arizona, Hawaii, or anywhere outside the US.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
History? (Score:3, Informative)
If Microsoft's patch will cause Windows XP (or Vista) to show the WRONG time for files saved near the DST change dates/times in years past, then it is NOT A FIX. This DST change has very, very deep effects on every single program that processes ANY dates/times before 2007 in the US. Program that went back before the current DST settings have already dealt with this (or decided to be wrong), but for those of us with no data older than Windows itself, we've never had to worry about this...until now.
For example, a power company wants to compare the power usage trend for, say, 5-6pm (when a large portion of people get out of and home from work) during late March for the years 2005-2008. If their software doesn't know to account for two different DST rules, then two of those years will be comparing the wrong hour of the day. And, FWIW, I chose this example specifically because it lends itself much more to local time than to UTC.
So, to patch this correctly, Windows will need to know which set of [at least two] DST rules to use (based on the year) when translating ANY time from 'system' (i.e. UTC) to 'local'. I don't see that happening, so I don't think that even the XP and Vista users will have a working OS, at least in the sense of correct time translation from UTC to local in the USA.
Oh dear. (Score:5, Funny)
official (sortof) fix (Score:4, Informative)
Every version of Windows has a "resource kit", though Microsoft only supports Win98+ so you may need to hit old download sites for those ancient versions of Windows. You can download the resource kit from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/ [microsoft.com]. Download this if you do not have it already.
Once the resource kit is downloaded and installed search your disk drive for tzedit.exe and run it.
Select your timezone from the list and click edit.
You'll have two boxes "Start Day" and "End Day" change these from what they are to what they need to be for the new change.
Click Ok, then Close.
To make the settings take effect restart, or select Date/Time from the control panel, choose a different timezone, save and close then repeat selecting your correct timezone this time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ford aint giving garantee for their 2000 models cars either.
And Ford doesn't get my business either. 10 year / 100,000 miles. Thank you Kia and Suzuki.
And a big middle finger to Microsoft for this move.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Warranty - and safety - are also the reasons I went with a Kia Sportage. Manufacturer support counts for a lot, the sense that they will stand behind their product. That's also why I've been an OSX user for the last few years. Microsoft would have to make huge changes for me to go back. Apple simply does a better job. There's a bonus, too; old Windows machines make great linux-based servers. :)
1 question (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Hm... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Hm... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Hm... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:GMT (Score:5, Funny)
Remember this moment, people: 80 past 2 on April 47th, the moment Microsoft finally kicked Windows 2000 to the curb.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"3 piglets, 1/16 of stone and a horn after Matins, on 3 Sunday after Xmas"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It had nothing to do with energy until...well, that's another topic.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about it, most kids go
Re:New Daylight Savings Time rules? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it was passed into law in August of 2005, so it's been around for a while. Here's a link [nist.gov] to the relevant bits. Following is the relevant changes:
It actually got quite a bit of news coverage at the time. It's been on Slashdot several times [google.com] as well.
Cheers
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Umm... is this really a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a reason why every system clock in an Active Directory system is synchronized. If the server's clock is off from Atomic time, so will all of the clients.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)