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Author Topic: Daylight-Saving Time Bug  (Read 14544 times)

app103

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Daylight-Saving Time Bug
« on: March 11, 2007, 06:52 AM »
In 2005 a new law was passed that changed the start of Daylight Savings Time from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March, in the US. This is 3 weeks earlier than it used to be. Canada will be following the US and will also be changing the date as well.

Software created before this law was passed has the potential for screwing up. And computers aren't the only devices that can be affected by this...your old VCR or wrist watch has the potential of having problems too. Any device that contains a clock that adjusts for Daylight Savings Time can be affected.

Some older operating systems that are affected are not longer supported and there is no patch available to correct it. (Windows 95, 98, ME, 2K) For these operating systems, you will have to turn off the automatic time adjustment and fix it manually when the change is supposed to occur.

For those running XP, there was a patch available that was sent out as an automatic update on Tuesday. You will need to have Service Pack 2 in order to receive this update.

Vista users are immune, as that operating system was created after 2005 and doesn't have this bug.

You can still be affected by this bug even if your operating system is patched, corrected, immune....other people may not have fixed theirs. Be very careful about trusting times for meetings and appointments from March 11 to April 1...confirm them and make sure everyone's clocks are synchronized, otherwise there could be problems with people showing up at the wrong time.

Also, avoid any type of transactions where the date is important within an hour of midnight, unless you know the system that will be recording the transaction is corrected. This means that your transactions could be recorded with the wrong date if you are not careful. Don't put off paying your car insurance till the last moment or you could find yourself with a lapsed policy.

Also be aware that any software that you use to update the time on your PC automatically, will need to be patched. Please check with the company that released that software for a patch or newer version. Most of these programs check with an official time server that gives the time in GMT and the software just subtracts time based on the date. If the date used in the software is wrong, your clock will be wrong.


http://www.cnn.com/2...ng.bug.ap/index.html

Gothi[c]

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Re: Daylight-Saving Time Bug
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2007, 07:01 AM »
Yippee, y2k all over again.
Will we ever learn to make date-critical software flexible enough?

I guess not, because, who expects to have time- as we know it, disappear or change.
What will the software world do when tomorrow they decide to remove the month February from the calendar?

Stranger things have happened.

PlayPhil

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Re: Daylight-Saving Time Bug
« Reply #2 on: March 11, 2007, 10:59 AM »
Daylight-Saving Time Bug - W2K Hack

Some older operating systems that are affected are not longer supported and there is no patch available to correct it. (Windows 95, 98, ME, 2K)

Well, there may not be a patch for these o/s's but you can hack W2K's TZ settings.

For those interested, the MS links are:

Using a GUI...

Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center for home users

Explicitly hacking the registry (not easy)...

How to configure daylight saving time for the United States in 2007

I'm just in the process and cannot confirm whether they work or not. I don't see why not, but...

I'll post back when I get a chance.

Also new to this board. If posting a reg hack or a link to one is frowned upon, delete my post, no offense taken...
Phil

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Re: Daylight-Saving Time Bug
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2007, 12:56 PM »
I'm sure your post will be quite welcome by our win2k holdouts  :Thmbsup:
Welcome to the site Phil, glad to have you here.

Darwin

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Re: Daylight-Saving Time Bug
« Reply #4 on: March 11, 2007, 01:44 PM »
Thanks PlayPhil! I'll be correcting my dad's notebook later on today and these links will be invaluable.

app103

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Re: Daylight-Saving Time Bug
« Reply #5 on: March 11, 2007, 01:53 PM »
If any 9x/2k user that knows of a time utility that can be installed and works as an alternative to registry hacking, for those that might be uncomfortable with that, it would be nice to hear about it.

My favorite one doesn't, but I am sure there is one out there that does.

It is a bit difficult to walk some people through the process of doing this without them screwing something up, and I would rather just recommend a tool to those people, rather than attempt a guided tour of their registry with them.

skywalka

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Re: Daylight-Saving Time Bug
« Reply #6 on: March 24, 2007, 01:42 PM »
Australia had this problem when they altered daylight savings to conincide with the recent Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

Everyone using Windows XP was affected.  Chaos!

Microsoft could have done more to fix the problem but didn't.

dwane413

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Re: Daylight-Saving Time Bug
« Reply #7 on: March 24, 2007, 05:54 PM »
Here's what I used on my Windows 98 machine. It worked fine for me, but I can't take responsibility for what it might do on other's machines.

http://www.mdgx.com/add.htm#TZU
« Last Edit: March 26, 2007, 06:23 PM by dwane413 »

Curt

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Daylight Saving Time
« Reply #8 on: March 18, 2010, 05:05 AM »
FROM Karen Kenworthy :: http://www.karenware.com/ ::
--

When I was young my family saved a lot of things. We saved rubber bands, leftover food, and paper bags. We saved orphan screws and bolts, bacon grease, and grocery store saving stamps. Other families saved string, aluminum foil, and coffee cans.

But one thing we never saved -- never even thought of saving -- was daylight.

Of course, days were much longer when I was young. I'd have to Google it to be certain, but I'm pretty sure days used to contain 25 to 30 hours. The hours were longer too. Just one of those childhood hours would be the equivalent of an entire modern afternoon.

And let's not forget that the sun was much younger, and therefore much brighter, when I was a child. You can see this effect in any published collection of historic mud pie recipes. Throughout the years cooking times for these kiddy delicacies have steadily increased, as the sun has grown dimmer.



Daylight Saving Time

Still, I don't think all these considerations combined can fully explain the recent worldwide obsession with saving daylight. Whatever the reasons, nothing seems able to stop lawmakers across the globe from tinkering with our clocks and calendars, all in the name daylight conservation.

It started simply enough. First, what everyone for centuries uncounted had innocently called "the time", would henceforth be known as the much more impressive-sounding "Standard Time". Now, instead of asking a friend "what time is it?", we'd ask "what is the Standard Time?"

Then, for a few months each summer, clocks would be set one hour ahead of this "Standard Time". During this special "Daylight Saving Time" the sun would shine one additional hour each evening, giving us the extra hour of daylight the politicians so desperately sought.

Now you and I knew this scheme was doomed to fail. All the extra daylight gained each evening came at the expense of daylight no longer shown in the early morning hours. We weren't saving daylight -- merely moving it around.

But legislators are a stubborn lot. Instead of admitting defeat, they decided to increase the number of days spent each year "saving daylight". Clocks would be set forward to "Daylight Saving Time" earlier in the year. And the return to "Standard Time" would occur at a later date. Surely now we'd be stacking spare daylight like cord wood, creating an ample stock to see us through those rainy and snowy days sure to come.

But no. As before, no daylight was banked. It was merely shifted from one time of day to another.

And you know what happened next. Our officials, undeterred, expanded "Daylight Saving Time" again, and again. And there's even talk of making "Daylight Saving Time" last year round, replacing "Standard Time" altogether.

Sigh.



Time Zone Troubles

To make this magic possible, Windows must keep track of all the world's time zones. In days gone by, this was a pretty easy task. After all, a time zone is just a region of the earth where clocks always display the same time, right?

Consider Mainland China. Although it's over 3,200 miles (5,149 km) wide, clocks throughout China are set 8 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, or the local time at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, UK) throughout the year. As a result, all of China is a single time zone.

Australia, on the other hand, is "only" about 2,500 miles (4,023 km) wide. Yet it contains at least three time zones (Western, Central, and Eastern). And, if you count variations in the way Daylight Saving Time is implemented, the number of time zones grows to at least five. That's because parts of their Eastern and Central time zones celebrate a period of Daylight Saving Time, while other parts of those same zones do not.

Then there's the strange case of the United States of America. Most textbooks tell us it is divided into six time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska, and Hawaii. But Daylight Saving Time also complicates this seemingly simple picture.

For example, unlike the rest of the Mountain time zone, the state of Arizona has chosen not to observe Daylight Saving Time. As a result, you might think Arizona is technically in a zone all its own. But, a large portion of Arizona -- the Navajo Indian Reservation -- sets its own rules and does observe Daylight Saving Time. So part of Arizona is in one time zone, while the rest is in another.



And so the story goes. All around the world time zones are numerous and complex. Add all the time variations together, and you'll find there are at least 96 different -- and frequently changing -- time zones covering our planet!

As you can imagine, our binary buddies, and the nice folks who program them, can become unwound trying to keep up with changes to our time zones. Moving the time of sunrise and sunset may require only a few minutes of a legislator's day. But making, testing, and installing the necessary updates to operating systems, and other software, can require days or weeks of head-scratching, pencil-sharpening, caffeine consumption, and other vital practices of the programmer's art.

Fortunately, after programmers have done their work, changes to our software are often installed on our computers automatically. Newer versions of Windows receive updates, including those needed to deal with changes to time zones and Daylight Saving time, via "Windows Update" or other service. If all goes well, we may not even know the necessary changes to our software have been made.

But what if you're using an older version of Windows, one no longer being maintained (such as Windows 2000 or Windows 98)? Microsoft is no longer releasing time zone changes for those operating systems. But lots of folks count on those senior citizens of the software world. And those folks still want their classic versions of Windows to always know the time of day.



Zone Manager

One answer to that question is a little utility I wrote a few years ago, called "Zone Manager". This program started life as an easy way to change your laptop computer's time zone setting when you travel from town to town.

[Click to see larger image]:

ptzone.jpgDaylight-Saving Time Bug



Zone Manager could (and still can) create shortcuts on your Windows desktop to each of the time zone's you'll pass through on a journey. Then, when you arrive at each new location, you simply double-click the appropriate shortcut to instantly set your computer's clock to the correct local time and zone.

Almost as a lark, I also taught Zone Manager to make new time zones. I really don't know why I did that. But I discovered it could be done, and thought it would be a fun, if not particularly useful feature.

Then, along came the recent round of time zone changes -- mostly adjustments to the Daylight Saving Time scheme. Combine that with retirement of some popular versions of Windows and the ability to create a new time zone became useful after all!

Now you and I can create our own time zone entries among Windows' large (but sometimes obsolete) collection. By specifying the correct begin and end times for Daylight Saving Time, and making this new time zone our computer's local zone, our older computer will once again know the correct time-of-day all year round.

Asking Zone Manager to make a new time zone is easy. Here's how I did it on one computer running Windows 2000, whose time zone information had become out-of-date:

[Click to see larger image]:

ptzone-edit.jpgDaylight-Saving Time Bug



First, I ran Zone Manager and clicked its "Edit Zones ..." button.

When the Edit Zone window appeared, I clicked its "My Custom Time Zone" tab then its "New Zone" button".

The default time zone information for new zones is the same as my current time zone. So I simply made the necessary changes to the Daylight Saving Time begin and end dates, and then clicked the "Save Zone" button.

Finally, I clicked the "Save All Changes and Close" button.

That's it! You can activate your new zone directly from Zone Manager by selecting the zone from the program's main window, then clicking the program's "Activate Zone" button. The new zone will also appear in Windows' list of time zones displayed when adjusting your computer's clock.

Best of all, Windows will now automatically adjust your computer's clock each time Daylight Saving Time begins or ends. And programs that automatically synchronize your computer's clock with super-accurate atomic clocks across the Internet (including Zone Manager and my Time Sync programs) will set the time correctly thanks to your help fixing the time zone information.


If you'd like to use Zone Manager to update your time zone, you can download a copy of the program here:

    http://www.karenware...owertools/ptzone.asp

Shades

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Re: Daylight-Saving Time Bug
« Reply #9 on: March 20, 2010, 12:34 PM »
Here in Paraguay the DST is adjusted when the president signs a decree. He/she does this when it suits him/her best. My english Windows changes the time automatiaclly in the middle of the month. And I communicate a lot in Holland, where the DST is automatically activated at the last sunday of the months March/October.

As you can imagine, it is a messy time here in the South Americas. But we are not alone as I understand from Karen's story in the first post...

It definitely looks like an interesting tool to me.