As my compadre TL mentioned last week on this blog, a change in DST(Daylight Savings Time) for the nation has resulted in the need for an update of timezone data for all servers within our network. While for most machines, this can be resolved with a simple vendor-supplied patch, users supporting their own OSes that are no longer covered by vendor support (IE, Windows 2000) appear to be left out in the cold regarding this change. Fortunately, by using commonly available tools, Windows 2000 users are able to modify the timezone data on their local machine to reflect this new change. Read on for more information!

With the upcoming DST switch, OS vendors have been very proactive in providing patches for their Operating Systems that allow them to follow the new rules passed by Congress regarding DST for American timezones.

However, persons still operating legacy servers such as Windows 2000 were dismayed to learn that Microsoft was sticking to its guns regarding their Windows 2000 EOL(End of Life). Hotfixes were made available for Windows XP and Server 2003, but the Windows 2000 hotfix (which does exist) has not seen public release. In order to obtain it, one must order it from their Microsoft Account Manager. I believe the current list price is $4000 for a site license to use the hotfix - a large sum for a systems administrator looking to update a small amount of servers.

Fortunately, a tool released back at the beginning days of Windows 95 as part of the Kernel Tools package allows an administrator to hand-edit the Windows Timezone files in order to reflect the new DST settings.

In order to get started, download the tool to your Windows 2000 server from Microsoft from the following link: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/8/a/58a208b7-7dc7-4bc7-8357-28e29cdac52f/TZEDIT.exe

After downloading, run the file, and extract the tzedit program somewhere on your server (The default of Program Files\TZedit is usually fine)

Run the extracted program - by default, the current timezone is already highlighted for you, so go ahead and click "Edit"

Now, enter the new date settings in DST portion of the timezone:
Starts 2nd Sunday of March at 2:00 AM
Ends 1st Sunday of November at 2:00 AM

That should be the only change you need to make - Click "OK", then "Close".

In order to make the server re-read the zone file - you will need to do one of two things:
Reboot the server or Double-click the clock to pull up time and date settings, and under the Time Zone tab, pick a different timezone and hit Apply, and then re-select your real timezone and hit apply again.

You're done! Your server has been updated with the new DST rules, and will change its clock at the appropriate date.

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