Computer time: Windows against the rest of the world

By jeltsch on Sat, 02/10/2018 - 05:54

I am not sure, but Windows seems to be the only operating system, that wants the computer clock to be set to the local time zone instead of universal standard time (UTC). Maybe that is a relic of the times when Microsoft thought that the internet was not very important for the future of computing. All other operating systems apparently use UTC: MacOS, Android, Linux, BSD, ... However, if you are dual-booting your computer, you can get into trouble. Not all operating systems detect automatically a dual boot install and adjust their behaviour in order to be compatible with Windows. If this is the case, the easiest is to change the behaviour of Windows. A clear write-up how to do so is available from https://liliputing.com/2016/03/fix-time-problem-dual-boot-computers-wind..., but here are the steps in a nutshell:

  • Open the registry editor
  • Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation
  • Make a new entry: DWORD (32-bit Value) and name it RealTimeIsUniversal
  • Set its value to 1