Update Your OS for Daylight Savings Time

This year Daylight Saving Time is not at it’s normal time. The government changed the dates. Hooray for them! Anyway, your computer doesn’t know what the government has done (aren’t you glad?) So… for your computer to correctly automatically change the date as it has always done for DST, you need to apply some updates.

First of all, if you have Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, or Windows 2000… tough! They are no longer supported and you are hosed. (Actually, just turn off the “automatic update feature” on Daylight Savings Time on your machine and set the time manually!) If you have Windows XP, Service Pack 1, then upgrade to Service Pack 2! If you are at Windows XP, Service Pack 2, then do the following:

Go to:

https://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Choose “Custom” and select “Windows Update (KB931836).” Apply it and reboot! NOTE: If you have already been doing regular updates… you MAY have already applied this one! If it doesn’t “show up” in the list as available, you probably already have applied it!

If you are using Microsoft Outlook, you will need to update it as well… Outlook has a separate update called “Time Zone Data Update Tools for Outlook Calendars.”

More info on that is here:

https://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/931667

And, of course, if you have Microsoft Windows Vista… it is already “up-to-date” with the change, and you are “good to go!”

If you are running a flavor of Linux or FreeBSD, then check out this article:

Update Linux and FreeBSD systems for new Daylight Saving Time settings

Bottom line, you need to be sure that your machine is up-to-date with it’s latest patches before Sunday!

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