Windows 98/ME Daylight Savings Time Zone Update

 

Starting in 2007, in line with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, there are new changes in when daylight savings time starts. In the United States, DST now begins on the 2nd Sunday of March, and ends the 1st Sunday of November.

For most people running micro$oft windows, you can go to support.microsoft.com and automatically download a patch to implement the new changes to your computer. For those using older windows, e.g., windows 98, there is no support as microsoft has stopped supporting these operating systems a while back.

However, you are not SOL. Information on how to manually change the time zone settings is detailed in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387 That file contains the latest, and final, time zone updates for all countries as of March 5, 2007. It includes the registry changes one needs to put in their computer.

Using the information provided by micro$oft, it is pretty simple to put together a Win 98, Win ME patch to automatically update your computer. This no-frills, quick-and-dirty patch is for the ENGLISH edition of windows 98, and windows ME.


INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS:
1) Download win98timezoneupdate.reg for Windows 98/ME, ENGLISH build.
It's a text file, so you can (optionally) open it up to take a look at it to check for any malicious code.

2) Open "My Computer" located on your desktop.

3) Double-click on the win98timezoneupdate.reg file you just downloaded.

4) Click YES to merge changes into your registry.

5) Click OK when finished




VERIFY CHANGES:
1) Double-click on the date/time icon in the control panel

2) Change the date to March 11, and change the time to 1:59 AM.


3) Click APPLY. Then wait one minute.

4) If it works.



  The .reg file contains the following code (taken from microsoft's knowledge base article located here)

The code is "dirty" as I didn't bother removing the registry code that windoze 98 doesn't use.



For a world map of countries supporting daylight savings time, check out http://www.worldtimezone.com/daylight.html