Kurt Shintaku's Blog

The Energy Policy Act extended daylight saving time by four weeks in 2007.  This change starts on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November.

What does that mean to you as a Microsoft software user?  Plenty.  Any product that is using time zones in anyway is affected and needs to be patched or "adjusted".

WINDOWS XP SP2/WINDOWS SERVER 2003 SP1:  NO PROBLEM!
Normally this isn’t a big deal if you’re using a supported Operating System like Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Server 2003 SP1.   There is a patch that will update your machine through MicrosoftUpdate.  (http://update.microsoft.com) and you’re problem free. 

If you need to download the patches yourself, they’re available here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928388

OLDER OPERATING SYSTEMS:  PROBLEM!
Unfortunately, there are many people that are either:

• Still running Windows NT or 9x or…
• Still running Windows 2000 Professional/Server Service Pack "whatever"
  (which is completely unsupported without a custom support agreement with Microsoft)
• Still using Windows XP Service Pack 1
  (which is again unsupported)

WHAT TO DO?
The good news is that this whole issue is very, very, very well documented.  Most everything you need to know is available here:

• Preparing for daylight saving time changes in 2007
  http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx
• The solution for individuals with older, unsupported operating systems is documented here:
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387

The net net of the solution is that that days in which Daylight Savings time is enacted has to be adjusted in the registry and this can be done using either:

• a GUI tool called TZEDIT.EXE
• through REGEDIT locally on the machine
• by applying a .REG file to the local machine with the appropriate registry changes

MASS DEPLOYMENT
It is possible to deploy registry changes globally to all your workstations by using a login script however the administrator will need to elevate the privileges of his users for the applicaiton of these reg changes because most users don’t have the security required to edit the registry.  This is addressed in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387.

WEBCAST FOR WINDOWS 2000 USERS
We’re going to have a live webcast on January 18th, specifically on the topic of Windows 2000 & the DST change.  You can sign up here:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032324210&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US