[Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

toothandnail · 2012-09-24 14:04:32

I'm currently dual booting Arch and Windows (Vista). I'd prefer to be without Windows, but need it sometimes.

Wanted to try systemd, but I've not been able to get it to work with local time, so I've reset the hardware clock to UTC and followed the instructions in the Wiki to set Windows to use UTC.

Arch is correctly displaying localtime, but Windows is still displaying UTC. I've made sure that Windows is not set to adjust for daylight savings time, and I've also disabled the Windows internet time checking, but I'm still getting UTC displayed in Vista.

What have I missed? Searched the forum, but didn't find anything that looked relevant, so I'm a bit stuck....

Paul.

Last edited by toothandnail (2012-09-25 20:18:55)

brebs · 2012-09-24 14:10:55

See thread - and its links of course.

toothandnail · 2012-09-24 14:52:10

brebs wrote:

See thread - and its links of course.

Thanks. I'd already read that thread - doesn't help much. The Linux side is working quite correctly - BIOS time is set to UTC, Arch (and SalineOS) are both displaying local time. I've hacked the Windows registry (and checked to make sure that the hack is correct as shown in the Wiki), but Windows is still displaying the UTC time, not my local time.

I'd like to simply dump Windows, but I do have to use it for customer support sometimes, so I guess it has to stay for the moment. Would be nice to get it to display time correctly....

Paul.

Scimmia · 2012-09-24 15:21:12

toothandnail wrote:

I'd like to simply dump Windows, but I do have to use it for customer support sometimes

Virtual machines work very well for this kind of thing. I keep a native Windows installation around to interact with some specific hardware I haven't gotten to work inside the VM yet, but that's it.

I can't be of much help on the original question, the registry hack is working just fine here.

Last edited by Scimmia (2012-09-24 15:23:32)

toothandnail · 2012-09-24 22:12:57

Scimmia wrote:

toothandnail wrote:
I'd like to simply dump Windows, but I do have to use it for customer support sometimes
Virtual machines work very well for this kind of thing. I keep a native Windows installation around to interact with some specific hardware I haven't gotten to work inside the VM yet, but that's it.

If I had a legit copy of XP I'd probably try that. But, knowing what a dog Vista is on bare metal, I'm not sure about trying it in a virtual machine. Difficult to do as well, since all I've got is the restore disks for Vists - don't think that would allow me to create a workable virtual machine.

I can't be of much help on the original question, the registry hack is working just fine here.

I keep thinking I've done something wrong in the hack, but the .reg file I used follows the Wiki exactly.. I guess I'll have to see if I can remove the entry and try it again.

Paul.

Scimmia · 2012-09-24 22:29:27

I haven't actually tried Vista in a VM. I have XP and Win7, but have only run Vista native.

OK, first thing I would do is make absolutely sure the hardware clock is set correctly. Sometimes you just see the system clock which was set by ntp, but that value doesn't get written to the hardware. There is usually a time display in the BIOS setup screen, check that.

Assuming that the hwclock is set correctly, how did you apply the registry update in Windows, with regedit or by copying the supplied .reg file? If you used Regedit, make absolutely sure that you didn't misspell the key name and created it as a DWORD value, not Binary or String. If you used the reg file, fire up Regedit and make sure the key was created.

If everything looks good there, I'm out of ideas.

anonymous_user · 2012-09-25 00:18:47

For my dual-boot, I set the BIOS to the actual local time (not UTC) and then I just put this into /etc/adjtime:

0.0 0.0 0.0
0
LOCAL

toothandnail · 2012-09-25 20:10:07

Scimmia wrote:

I haven't actually tried Vista in a VM. I have XP and Win7, but have only run Vista native.
OK, first thing I would do is make absolutely sure the hardware clock is set correctly. Sometimes you just see the system clock which was set by ntp, but that value doesn't get written to the hardware. There is usually a time display in the BIOS setup screen, check that.

After I made the changes to the registry, I restarted the machine, went into the BIOS and set the clock to UTC through the BIOS interface.

Assuming that the hwclock is set correctly, how did you apply the registry update in Windows, with regedit or by copying the supplied .reg file? If you used Regedit, make absolutely sure that you didn't misspell the key name and created it as a DWORD value, not Binary or String. If you used the reg file, fire up Regedit and make sure the key was created.
If everything looks good there, I'm out of ideas.

I've come to the conclusion that it is probably just Windows being Windows. I don't use it that much, tend to forget how much I hate it. I used regedit to check and the hack is in place and correct.

Oddly enough, I seem to have a solution, though it doesn't help explain why Windows is ignoring the registry hack.

Paul.

toothandnail · 2012-09-25 20:18:27

anonymous_user wrote:

For my dual-boot, I set the BIOS to the actual local time (not UTC) and then I just put this into /etc/adjtime:
0.0 0.0 0.0
0
LOCAL

I used the hwclock command listed in the beginners guide to generate an /etc/adjtime file for the install I've converted to systemd. The system ignored it, continued to act as though the BIOS clock was set to UTC. I then changed the other Arch install (still using initscripts) to UTC, also changed the SalineOS install to UTC. That was when I hit the problem with Windows ignoring the UTC registry hack.

This morning, I restarted the systemd Arch install, and found it is now using local time - had to go and change the BIOS clock back to local time, then fix the other Linux distributions on the machine. Windows is still using local time, even with the registry hack in place, but at this stage I don't care too much - I may eventually go and remove the hack from the registry, since everything else seems to be working ok with local time now.

I wonder if it was the fact that I changed the hardware clock that caused the systemd Arch install to suddenly start using localtime, but the question is somewhat academic at this point.

Paul.

brebs · 2012-09-25 21:02:07

Maybe you need Vista service pack 2.

Note: This method was not initially supported on Windows Vista and Server 2008, but came back with Vista SP2, Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.

Also mentioned in forum.
Ain't google wonderful?

Arch Linux

#1 2012-09-24 14:04:32

[Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

#2 2012-09-24 14:10:55

Re: [Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

#3 2012-09-24 14:52:10

Re: [Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

#4 2012-09-24 15:21:12

Re: [Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

#5 2012-09-24 22:12:57

Re: [Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

#6 2012-09-24 22:29:27

Re: [Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

#7 2012-09-25 00:18:47

Re: [Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

#8 2012-09-25 20:10:07

Re: [Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

#9 2012-09-25 20:18:27

Re: [Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

#10 2012-09-25 21:02:07

Re: [Solved, sort of] UTC and Windows

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