DST patch for any Windows machine

But one Windows OS that's not getting this DST patch is Windows 2000. That is, unless you have an extended support contract—and there are plenty of people out there still running Windows 2000 who have no extended support contract.

The good news is that Microsoft has provided a set of manual directions that make it possible to implement the DST patch by hand. The bad news is that they're not the easiest directions in the world, and even though Microsoft has provided a utility to make the job a little easier, it's still not as simple as it could be.

To that end, the folks at IntelliAdmin.com have written their own tool to update any Windows machine (Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista) to the new DST changes. The tool covers all time zones for the continental U.S., from Alaska Standard Time to Newfoundland Standard Time, and everything in between.

When you run the tool, you'll be prompted to select which OS to apply the change to, which machine(s) to apply it to (including the local system), and any authentication that might be needed to apply the change. You can also elect to uninstall the change from a target computer.

The utility requires no installation to run; it can be run from a USB flash drive or other removable drive. However, it does require administrative permissions to run. The authors have also provided the source code (in Object Pascal for Delphi).

About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of the Windows Power Users Newsletter, which is devoted to hints, tips, tricks, news and goodies for Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP users and administrators. He has more than 10 years of Windows experience under his belt, and contributes regularly to SearchWinComputing.com and SearchSQLServer.com.

More information on this topic:

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