Daylight Savings Time – What you need to know

Although I’m sure most of you are aware of this already, due to the importance of this issue, I felt it was worth writing a post that talked about the Daylight Savings Time (DST) update and what can be done about it. 

 

Background

The start and end dates of daylight saving time (DST) in the United States are scheduled to change in 2007 due to the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In general, all computer systems will need to be updated to reflect the new DST start and stop dates. This means applying software updates to Microsoft products – the Windows operating system and in some cases applications. A good starting place for this information can be found online at https://www.microsoft.com/dst2007. 

 

Recommendations

We’re recommending that customers start putting a plan in place to deploy these updates now. It’s also important to note that the Outlook time zone tool should be run after Windows and Exchange patches are deployed. This is a tool, not a patch that updates Outlook’s 2000 and 2003 calendars.

 

In addition, all versions of Windows can be manually updated using the tzedit.exe utility or other techniques documented in Knowledge Base article 914387, which is the preferred method of remediation for any product outside of Mainstream Support. (The tzedit.exe tool allows you to create and edit time zone entries for the Date/Time settings in the Control Panel, especially for daylight-saving time).

 

Thanks to Chris Samson who helped pull a lot of this information together!

 

Adam Burke