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Mary Jo Foley’s Daylight Saving Time Tips for Microsoft users

I had the pleasure of speaking today with ZDNet‘s Mary Jo Foley about the upcoming Daylight Saving Time change and her Tips for Microsoft users. She blogs that the change is about a one month away until the new Daylight Saving Time (DST) changes take effect in the U.S. and many other countries, and this was another good article calling attention to the change that seems to be getting more press. (Note that much of Europe won’t switch to European Summer Time until March 25th.)

As Mary Jo noted, Microsoft will start pushing out to Windows users a new update (KB 931836) needed “in order to keep their computer system clocks running on time.” You may’ve already downloaded and installed this currently ‘recommended’ update on Microsoft Update (KB 928388), as we first made it available just after the ‘fall back’ last year.

I noted this week that this new Windows OS update includes a bunch of late-breaking time zones: the new updates include the North American DST 2007 changes as well as other global changes, the change for Western Australia (KB 929120), and several additional changes that have occurred since KB928388 was originally released (such as Newfoundland) to the DST 2007 North American rules.

Turning on Automatic Updates (‘AU’ around the office) ensures that you receive these software updates from Microsoft when they are available next week.  You can configure Automatic Updates to download and install your updates automatically (as I do at home, to run after I go to bed), or you can set AU to download them and then prompt you to install them yourself. (To make sure you have Automatic Updates turned on, visit Microsoft Update).


A note for corporate users with WSUS and SMS: This new update (931836) is a cumulative rollup of prior updates plus additional changes, and will be published on Windows Update and WSUS as an Update Rollup next week on Feb 13th.  Because KB 931836 is an Update Rollup, it will also be available for scanning and deployment using ITMU, the Microsoft Update for IT used by SMS.  Customers who have previously deployed KB928388 and who are not in the newly updated time zone areas do not need to deploy this prior to March 12, but should ultimately roll this update into their environments to ensure complete and accurate time zone databases on all servers and PCs.


Also, there are a few news articles on the DST change that refer to our new site — including USA Today and Cleveland’s First Coast News — and general news coverage in Forbes, PCWorld News and the Houston Chronicle.


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9 replies on “Mary Jo Foley’s Daylight Saving Time Tips for Microsoft users”

I’m glad to see this is getting press. I took this issue to Microsoft and opened a case on it over a month ago. There were testing failures on Microsoft’s part with the 928388 patch. To be fair, other vendors are having the same issue. Oracle is bad, and IBM is severely impacted, but they are just a few. Take a look at this list of other software vendors: http://www.technologyrage.com/site/2007/01/vendor_links_1.html

It’s a big mess, and the situation is just ugly all around.

Sorry to hear that you had an issue with the 928388 patch – I haven’t seen any reported.

Above we read that WSUS should now contain the Daylight Saving Time fix (since it was released as part of the February security fixes). I didn’t see it, so I changed the options in WSUS.

Formerly, I had these “checked” in WSUS to download these updates: Critical updates

    Feature Packs

    Security Updates

    Updates

Since I didn’t see the update, I also added the category “Update Rollups” yesterday.

I still don’t see the update.

Anyone use WSUS and have the update listed? If so, what is the release date on it?

[Yes, there has been 1 synchronization since I had that last change.]

Thanks!!

I still don’t see it on WSUS. Similar to Steve Iltis above. Any luck anyone else?

IT professionals worldwide need to be cognizant of the DST2007 problem, especially if your organization, your organizations customers, or your partners have a physical or electronic presence in the United States or Canada. There is a small but growing body of information available online to help address the DST2007 problem.

WSUS can only be used to push the 931836 OS updates for Win2003 SP1 and WinXP SP2.  It cannot be modified to push other updates.  If you are having difficulty seeing this update in WSUS, first make sure that updates with the classification of Update Rollups are selected under Options –> Synchronizaton Options.  On that same page the appropriate products (OS versions) should be selected as well.  

Once those are confirmed to be in place make sure the catalog has synchronized without error.  With the synchronization successfully completed, make sure that updates with the classification of "Update Rollups" are not filtered out from the view under Updates –> View frame –> "Products and Classifications".

I have checked in every clasification in synchronize option but still don’t see Daylight update in WSUS list.

Microsoft is just ignoring everyone’s concerns.  931836 does not show up in WSUS when following the steps above.  Its been reported on forums everywhere, with the same problem and no solution.    But IE7? – that’s a critical update!

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