P. Clay Sherrod Nov 8, 2011
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill J Gray" <pluto@...>
To: "P. Clay Sherrod" <drclay@...>; <guide-user@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2011 9:42 AM
Subject: Daylight "saving" issue
> Hi Clay,
>
> Something has just occurred to me...
>
> What exactly did you do to persuade your computer not to
> adjust for daylight saving time?
>
> I've been assuming that if one left the "automatically adjust
> clock for daylight saving changes" box unchecked, then the computer
> would simply behave as if DST had never existed. In that case,
> selecting "GST" (either the UK or the Casablanca/Monrovia flavors)
> and leaving the box unchecked would result in your computer
> effectively running on UTC. After all, if you lived in the UK
> and didn't bother fiddling with your clocks twice a year, you'd
> be on UTC.
>
> However, the testing I've done suggests that this is _not_
> what that check-box means. All it means is that, if you leave
> that box unchecked, Windows won't push the displayed time ahead
> or back by an hour each spring and fall; it will leave it to you
> to do that, manually. It will continue to assume that, during
> the summer, the difference between Eastern US time and UT is
> four hours. Or, in your case, that the difference between UK
> time and UT is one hour, dropping to zero difference in winter.
> Which is why, in summer, you have to set TOFFSET=1 (or -1),
> and in winter, TOFFSET=0. In short, the behavior you and I
> (and others) are seeing is, in the eyes of Microsoft, "not a bug;
> it's a feature".
>
> All of which still seems pretty crazy to me. It appears to
> be a relatively common problem. Other operating systems take the
> sensible approach of having the system clock run in UTC in the
> first place, rather than in local time, but configuring Windows
> to do this involves use of Regedit:
>
> http://superuser.com/questions/185773/does-windows-7-support-utc-as-bios-time
>
> (Not a Win7 only fix, despite the title; it goes back at
> least to XP.) If you're desperate, you could try that fix. But
> the TOFFSET= one may be simpler.
>
> -- Bill
>