Tag: IT management

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MSIT Webcasts on daylight saving time: next one on Friday, Feb. 16

We held a public webcast that was very well attended… I’ll include the link when I have it handy.


Today we were joined by some of the intrepid folks from MSIT (thanks, Jan, Bob & Mike) as they talked about how Microsoft’s Information Technology group has prepared and is rolling our internal testing and approach to updating systems for daylight saving time.


If you missed the one today, we’ll post the recorded webcast online shortline, along with Q&A.


But if you missed today’s webcast, we have another one this Friday:



Support WebCast: The impact of daylight saving time within the Enterprise – Level 200; Friday, February 16, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007: 1:00 P.M. Pacific time (Coordinated Universal Time – 2 hours). This Support WebCast will help you understand how products within the Enterprise are approaching this transition. 


 

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Your questions: “Where can I find Tzedit.exe to edit time zone info?”

First off, this guidance is not for the novice. If you’re not sure about how to use certain tools or update your registry, think twice before you mess around with your operating system files or manually configuring daylight saving time dates by modifying an existing time zone.


I have been pinged a couple of times by folks who have seen older versions of the Knowledge Base (KB) articles that are up on our web site that call for a certain utility previousl released in several resource kits:


“Where can I find Tzedit.exe to edit time zone info?”


We provided a tool that allows users to change the time zone settings on a single computer, cleverly referred to as the Time Zone Editor (aka Tzedit.exe). This tool lets you create and edit time zone entries for the date and time settings in Control Panel.


You can find Tzedit.exe available for download from the Microsoft Download Center here: Download the Tzedit.exe utility package.


In general, don’t download Microsoft (or any other application for that matter) from an unknown third-party web site. Microsoft has scanned this file for viruses and stores the bits on security-enhanced servers that help prevent any unauthorized changes to the file.



Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows, SBS, Daylight Saving Time, DST.


 

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ComputerWorld on DST updates from various IT vendors

Computerworld has an article today “DST: How to get IT vendors to give you the right time of day” that talks about how IT vendors are working to prepare and release patches, work-arounds and other fixes for products to address the new Daylight Saving Time (DST) impacts as I noted previously.


A sampling of some of the major IT vendors and the status of their patch availability are noted: IBM, Cisco, Sun and BEA are mentioned in addition to Microsoft.


For more info, visit http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007.

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Office Online: Prepare your calendar items for daylight saving time changes in 2007

Office Online now has a new article (derived from an upcoming KB) “Prepare calendar items for daylight saving time changes in 2007” – please see http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102086071033.aspx?pid=CH100776851033.


The article provides more details on the soon-to-be-available Outlook Time Zone Data Update tool and the situations where we’re recommending that users download and run the upcoming Outlook Time Zone Data Update Tool, which I have affectionately dubbed “Tzdut.”


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Your questions: are routers, telephones affected by Daylight Saving Time changes?

I heard this question come up a couple of times this week, the latest today: “I have a router on my home network: will it be affected by this Daylight Saving Time change?”

 

And “What about PBX phone systems?”

 

Generally speaking, no.

 

For the most part, I learned (thanks, Bob) that most telecom equipment does not utilize the system clock from the computer and, in businesses and enterprises, is updated manually during every DST change. This will allow the date/time on a desktop phone to be displayed correctly. For international voice traffic synchronization, you’ll often find that telephony equipment matches to a cesium clock that is maintained by the US government in Colorado.  These systems use a standard time — Coordinated Universal Time (aka UTC) — so there shouldn’t be any issue there. 

 

Also, Bob noted that “the vast majority of Network Equipment (>95%) uses GMT so is unaffected by the DST time change.”  


 

I’ll add that many popular routers utilize NTP using Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and is usually not impacted by individual time zone changes. Some routers may be configured to specific time zones, so it is best to check the documentation that comes with your system. For more info, also see Cisco’s NTP info page, with more than you will probably ever care to know about the subject.  😉