SillyDog701 Message Centre

[David Wonn]

For those of us running PCs with older versions of Windows and/or no internet connectivity, I have found an easy solution for the early Daylight Saving issue that impacts most of the United States. The answer is found in one of the most unexpected of all places...


It's on the Windows 98 CD!


All you have to do is pop in the Windows 98 CD into virtually any Windows PC, navigate to directory \tools\reskit\config and double-click tzedit.exe. Your current time zone should be highlighted; if not, select it. Just click the Edit button and you'll be greeted with the following:



(This screen shot was taken from Windows NT 3.51.)

Just change the Start Day to Second Sunday of March and the Last Day to First Sunday of November. Click OK, exit the Time Zone editor, and you are almost done. In order for this to take effect, you'll need to double-click your clock on your taskbar and select the Time Zone tab (or Control Panel - Date/Time in Windows NT 3.51.) Then change your Time Zone to something else (say Indiana) and back, then click OK. Now you're all set.

You can verify this works by changing your date to anytime next week and back, noticing the change from Standard Time to Daylight Time and back.

Don't be fooled by the fact that this solution comes from the Windows 98 CD. I have personally verified this fix to work on the following OSes:

Windows 95 original
Windows 95 B
Windows 95 C
Windows 98
Windows 98 SE
Windows NT 3.51
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 2000
Windows XP

It is extremely likely that it works on others as well (ME, 2003, and maybe NT 3.1 / 3.5).

You only need to patch your current time zone, unless you plan on moving in the near future. If you boot one PC to multiple OSes like I do, then only apply the patch to the one OS that you already designated to update the time.

Also, if you have an old PC without a CD-ROM drive, that's not a problem. Just copy the 3 tzedit.* files from the Windows 98 CD on another PC onto a floppy disk. If the floppy drive option is not available either, you can google for TZEdit, or get the 3 necessary files from here. If all else fails, you can always edit the registry in a worst case scenario if you're extremely cautious. It's in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation if you're good with binary.

I felt compelled to offer the Windows 98 CD solution to everyone after hearing faulty information from a so-called IT "expert" on one of the cable news channels within the last few hours. He claimed that users of older versions of Windows [98] would just have to turn off the daylight saving feature manually and re-apply it in a few weeks. I find such bad advice to be completely unacceptable, since I know several solutions. TZEdit just happens to be the easiest solution outside of Windows update.

I'm looking forward to seeing my old PCs update tomorrow morning, and look forward to seeing if my OS/400 patch worked on Monday.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.7 (compatible; OffByOne; Windows 2000)

[Don_HH2K]

Interesting to note that I've used the tzedit utility on about five or six Windows 2000 machines these past two weeks. Definitely easier than doing it manually.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2 x64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070303 BonEcho/2.0.0.2 (mmoy CE K8N-X02)

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[SSS]

Would I need to do this inside guest OS's in Virtual PC? I know it reads the time off the host OS, but do I still need to do it inside virtual machines?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070219 Firefox/2.0.0.2

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[Don_HH2K]

If Virtual PC is anything like VMware, it actually reads the time off the system BIOS. On most machines the BIOS time is stored at GMT, while Windows will apply the proper offset (in our region it's GMT -5). So yes, you'll probably need to apply these patches to Virtual PC guests as well.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2 x64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070303 BonEcho/2.0.0.2 (mmoy CE K8N-X02)

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[beanboy89]

I've just checked my Windows 98 SE CD, and there's no \tools\reskit\config directory.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070222 SeaMonkey/1.1.1

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billy.mozfaq.org | blog

[David Wonn]

[profman]

I have posted in another SillyDog Thread Western Australia to have daylight saving (3 Dec), about a page that tests whether your system still needs a patch for this time change, although I am not sure what OSs or countries that it works for.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915

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[Mandrake]

Thanks! This is just excellent for those on older versions of Windows. I'll make this thread a sticky too, since I'm sure lots of people will find it very useful.

For those who don't have a Windows 98 CD, the files can be downloaded straight from Microsoft.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070219 Firefox/2.0.0.2

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[SSS]

[Fulvio]

I tried it in a machine not connected to the web, using the file downloaded from the Windows website, burned to a CD in my connected machine. It was unzipped to two files. One with all the directions, but the business end of the file did nothing. It had no extention, and did not create a shorcut. May be my 98SE disk has the proper info, but I would have preferred to do it the easier way.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070222 SeaMonkey/1.1.1

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"I've got a very poor sense of direction. I keep forgetting which way is forwards."
WinXP, SP3, 512 MB, FF3.6, 3.6 portable, TB 3.0.3, TB2.0.25, FF3.5.9, FF3.7, SM2.0.4 nightlies, Google Chrome, IE8.0, Zone Alarm Firewall; AVG9.0, JRE1.6_18

[RootsMan]

Greetings,

You can download TZEdit directly from Microsoft: TZEdit.exe

For more info, see:
How to configure daylight saving time for the United States in 2007

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UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3

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[free-loops]

We run a network with about 300pc's, and 3 macs

We used a remote install admin tool we bought for 99

It works fine... just put the computer names in (as displayed in active directory)

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9

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http://free-loops.com

[catrachos]

Curiously, my XP machine, I thought with all the most recent updates in March 2009, still didn't have the extended US daylight saving settings, so my computer time was showing incorrectly. I used Tzedit to add the extended time zone changes.

See MS KB article 955839, "December 2008 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems" (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955839/) for the most 2008 update.

The previous year's update article has an active link to the Tzedit.exe utility download. Microsoft KB Article 931836, "February 2007 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems" (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931836). Or use the link shown by other replies.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; Comcast Install 1.0; GTB5; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; MS-RTC LM 8)