Set hardware clock to UTC on Windows (or how to make the clock work on a Mac Book Pro)

I recently bought a Mac Book Pro since I can now dual boot OS X and Windows XP. The only real issue that I've had is that OS X, like most Unices likes to set the hardware clock to UTC time. This causes the clock in Windows XP to be off by 5 hours (I'm in the central US timezone).



I recently discovered a registry tweak that will tell Windows to interpret the hardware clock as UTC time:




Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation]
"RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001



Just save the above reg script into a .reg file and import it to set your clock to UTC time. You can still set your timezone for the clock and have the correct time displayed. This can also be usefull if you are dual booting XP with any other Unix variations that like to set the harware clock to UTC. I usually run Linux and such in VirtualPC/VMWare so I havnt actually tried it with Linux.

Update:

It would seem that there are still some issues with this: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/09/02/224672.aspx

It seems to work most of the "time" for me but 1 or twice a day the clock changes to the timezone offset again. I just have to do a w32tm /resync /nowait to fix it. My suspicion is that the clock applet in the tray is monkeying it up.
Published Tuesday, June 20, 2006 5:34 PM by findleyd
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Comments

# bloggingIT - Dual booting causes clocks to go mental!

Monday, April 30, 2007 4:54 AM by bloggingIT - Dual booting causes clocks to go mental!

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# re: Set hardware clock to UTC on Windows (or how to make the clock work on a Mac Book Pro)

Thursday, May 17, 2007 6:23 PM by Chris Burel
Hi, Thanks for your post. However, I can't seem to get the w32tm /resync /nowait thing to work. I execute that command in the command prompt, and it says "The command completed successfully," but the clock on the tray doesn't change. Any thoughts?

# re: Set hardware clock to UTC on Windows (or how to make the clock work on a Mac Book Pro)

Friday, May 18, 2007 11:48 AM by findleyd

Actually it seems that the latest version of BootCamp has fixed this problem so I don't use the above method anymore. I'm also running Vista now instead of XP.

# Linux changing my BIOS clock? - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

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# UTC e Windows

Tuesday, March 31, 2009 4:35 AM by UTC e Windows

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# re: Set hardware clock to UTC on Windows (or how to make the clock work on a Mac Book Pro)

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 1:46 AM by Ryan

I now set windows to hide the clock in the tray until this is resolved. I only use windows for gaming and anytime it comes out of standby it changes the time... or whenever it feels like it.

# links for 2009-08-21 | ?????????

Friday, August 21, 2009 9:31 AM by links for 2009-08-21 | ?????????

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# re: Set hardware clock to UTC on Windows (or how to make the clock work on a Mac Book Pro)

Monday, October 26, 2009 1:30 PM by dmmcintyre3

Thanks, That worked great

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