zulu time on some MS Windows [was Re: Manipulating file dates]

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 11:05:45PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> What I recently learned:
> 
> The initial versions of Windows NT (on MIPS hardware) used UTC in the
> hardware clock that runs while the machine is off.
> 
> This feature was left in, but broken.  It was recently fixed!
>   <http://weblogs.asp.net/dfindley/archive/2006/06/20/set-hardware-clock-to-utc-on-windows-_2800_or-how-to-make-the-clock-work-on-a-mac-book-pro_2900_.aspx>
>   <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/mswish/ut-rtc.html>
> It seems that Vista SP2 fixes this.

But with no promise to maintain it and no official way to enable it.

> Windows NT (which includes XP, Vista, 7, 2000, 2003, etc. but not 9x or 
> me) internally keeps the clock in UTC.  I don't know if this observable.
>   <http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/09/02/224672.aspx>

Hard to beleive given how many errors they have had over the last few
years related to daylights savings time.

> Ray Chen's blog is often interesting to me even though I don't use MS
> Windows. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chen>
> 
> | They are even more stupid for not having changed it to allow users
> | the choice.
> 
> In recent versions you can chose sanity!  The secret incantation
> (registry entry):
> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation]
> "RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001

OK, a registery key is neat, but where is the actual place you can
officially change that setting?

> |  It would simplify their handling of daylights savings time
> | so much.  They keep having bugs in that after all.
> 
> MS Windows DST handling works fine until you dual-boot.  Perhaps
> Microsoft likes it that way.

Some people dual boot multiple versions of windows.  That doesn't
work either.

And it has still been a source of no end of bugs for them.

It does not work fine even with single booting.  Exchange gets it wrong
frequently, and if you happen to reboot during the changeover time it
can actually get confused sometimes.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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