A sharp indictment of Microsoft’s spotty support for changing time zones.
The Commonwealth Games are coming to Melbourne in March this year http://www.melbourne2006.com.au/ and normally that would not matter to us except that it’s going to cause a major upheaval for users of Microsoft Office, Exchange and Windows. It’ll mostly affect our Aussie friends but also anyone who deals with the Great Southern Land.
The problem is also a sharp indictment of Microsoft’s spotty support for changing time zones. Changes in daylight savings arrangements do happen so paying customers of Windows and Office are entitled to expect more elegant technologies to deal with this real world situation. According to the Microsoft Knowledge Base the cause of the problem is the change of daylight savings for the Commonwealth Games, but the real source of the problem is Microsoft’s failure to design for a rare, but hardly unprecedented, occurrence.
As you’ll see, special patches and even registry hacks can be required and even that may not be enough!
Check your calendar – we _are_ in the 21st Century but after reading this you’ll be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
Lots of Aussies read Office Watch and the problem is such a blot on Microsoft’s copybook that we’re devoting most of this issue to explaining this mess.
The 26th January is the Australian national day, after all.
THE SITUATION
The Melbourne Games end on the weekend that daylight savings (‘summer’) time would normally end in most (but not all) Australian states. So the governments decided to extend summer time by an additional week so that there would be no confusion during such a major event.
I should explain that the Commonwealth Games is a big deal in the UK and its former colonies – second only to the Olympics in importance for the countries involved.
For Victoria, ACT, NSW, Tasmania and South Australia states daylight savings time would normally end on 26 March 2006 and that’s what is setup in Windows and Outlook currently.
Instead it’ll end on 2 April 2006 – which means that appointments in the week 26 March to 2 April can be out by one hour.
THE PROBLEM
When you store an appointment in Outlook it records the UTC time plus the time zone that applies to the appointment – you don’t see that directly, just the adjusted date and time show in Outlook. That time zone information comes from Windows.
If you set a future appointment, Outlook looks not only at the time zone but any ‘summer time’ adjustments that apply for the date of the appointment. The date that the appointment is set for can adjust the time zone setting, not just the location. For example, if you create an appointment for 9am on a daylight savings day then another appointment for 9am after summer time ends – the two appointments will appear as 9am in the same time zone but underlying that is a different UTC time (one hour different).
Because Windows has not been setup with the adjusted Aussie daylight savings dates already, any appointments you’ve created in the extra summer time week for 2006 will be off by one hour.
The problem is compounded because Microsoft’s system can’t cope with ‘one off’ time zone adjustments. If you update Windows with these 2006 Aussie adjustments, they’ll carry forward into later years. Appointments made for 2007, 2008 or beyond will be considered as ‘summer time’ meetings as well!
As well as having to patch Windows, you have to remember to UNpatch it after 2 April 2006.
This means that during the ‘extra’ week you have to ensure that no appointments (one off or recurring) for the same dates in future years are made until after you’ve patched all Windows machines.
That’s easy to say but if you have hundreds or thousands of computers and people to manage then it’s going to be a mammoth task.
We don’t know what is more astonishing – that Microsoft didn’t put ‘one off’ time zone support into Windows years ago or that they’ve not bothered to do so in the decade or more since. As far as we can tell, there’s no improvement in Vista either.
WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO
Anyone in Australia, certainly in the affected states should be working on this now.
If you’re in a non-summer time Aussie state (WA, QLD or NT) or have dealings with Australia you might want to patch as well if you’re making appointments based on summer time. Most likely this will mean using the alternate time zone option in Outlook.
Microsoft provides some advice in a KB article but it glosses over the sad realities, especially for medium and large networks.
The first thing to do is apply the Windows patch asap – before more appointments are made in the affected date range.
The patch works for Windows ME, 2000, XP and Server 2003. It’s apparently not included as an optional update even though geographical information is available to the update process.
The patch creates special ‘Commonwealth Games’ time zones for Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart and Adelaide. While these zones are labeled ‘Commonwealth Games’ we feel they should have been labeled more explicitly ‘2006 only’ so it’s clearer to all that they should be removed afterwards.
Before applying the patch make sure you’re running the latest Service Packs (eg SP2 for Windows XP etc) because if you install a Service Pack AFTER updating the time zone information, the SP will remove the special time zone settings. The same thing will have if you do an Emergency Repair Process. In other words, between the time you apply this patch and 2 April 2006 you should not apply any major service packs (the inevitable security patches are OK to install) or remember to reapply the patch after an Emergency Repair.
To stop these time zone settings occurring again in 2007 and beyond you should make a task / appointment for Sunday 2 April 2006 (or first thing Monday) to uninstall the time zone patch and reset the time zone on the computer.
ABOUT THE PATCH
There are actually two patches and three files available from Microsoft here with no clear explanation of the differences between the downloads.
Mel-2006-dst-ntx86.exe 146 KB
This is the download for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
mel-2006-dst-me.exe 129 KB
This is the download for Windows ME.
mel-2006-dst-all.exe 282 KB
This file contains both of the above patches.
The readme file that comes in the downloads is really important – if you’re like most people and ignore the readme files then this is one time you should break from your standard routine. The readme is important, yet not available on the Microsoft web site so we’ve decided to publish in full below.
You can apply the patch even if your Windows machines are set to a different time zone (ie not one of the Aussie summer time states).
For computers running on the time zone in the affected areas there are two steps to the patch:
- Apply the patch. This adds the special time zone that extends the length of Australian Summer Time.
- Change the time zone setting on the computer to the applicable ‘Commonwealth Games’ setting (Control Panel | Date and Time | Time Zone).
If your Windows computers are not set to the time in one of the affected areas (ie you’re just adding the time zone information for reference as an alternate zone) then you only need to apply the patch.
The readme file supplied by Microsoft has more instructions including sample scripts to help administrators deploy the changes. Remember that the sample scripts need mapped drive letters not UNC paths.
On or after 2 April 2006
You should reset the time zone to the standard setting and remove the ‘one off’ time zones (so they aren’t accidentally used in future years).
The people who put together the patch have done a good job. Though the KB article could be clearer, the patch itself thoughtfully includes the necessary utilities so you don’t have to hunt around for them plus sample scripts for admins.
What a pity then that the whole patch is spoiled by the bottom line of the readme file:
” The solutions provided have not been regression-tested and may be destabilizing in a production environment. Install fixes at your own risk. “
Despite having enough time and resources, Microsoft admits that it hasn’t properly tested the patch and washes its corporate hands of all responsibility. Thanks a lot …
FIXING APPOINTMENTS
Any appointments created to occur between 26 March and 2 April will be one hour off after the Windows patch is implemented (because they are set to the normal summer time settings instead of the 2006 special dates).
Microsoft tries to outdo itself in arrogance by simply saying ‘Do not create appointments during the overlap period until after the operating system time zone has been updated’ – as if it was a simple as that.
How an IT department with hundreds or thousands of users is supposed to force people not to make appointments in a particular week is beyond us.
In addition you’re supposed to remember not to setup appointments for the same week in 2007 or beyond. This is unlikely except for recurring appointments made using the special time zone setting.
To adjust appointments made in the problem week you have to export the appointments then import them again after the new time zone is added. Details here.
You may want to create an ‘all day’ appointment for the range 26 March to 2 April to warn you to check the time of appointments during that period. Network admins may want to warn their users to double-check the times of appointments during the week in question (perhaps a message in the week before?).
WINDOWS CE, POCKET PC, WINDOWS MOBILE GET NOTHING
And if you think that’s bad – people who have given Microsoft money for their portable devices get even less. Not even some temporary time zones to cover the applicable period.
There’s a lot written here but it comes down to this:
On 26 March 2006 you have to manually adjust your mobile device to the +11 time zone – on the 2 April you have to remember to change it back again.
We suggest you create tasks / appointments that will remind you to make the two changes on the right dates.
Carefully check the times of appointments synched from Outlook for the week in question.
We feel that Microsoft is capable of doing better than this and have let down their customers badly. The company has very smart people working for it but sometimes fundamental problems get sidelined – much in the same way that security issues where ignored by Microsoft for so many years.
The Windows time zone support is designed for a neat and orderly world – not the real one. You can’t help feeling that a situation like this in the USA would have had Microsoft putting a lot more effort into the fundamental technology in Windows.
Surely a fraction of the smarts that is directed to things like new toolbars and flash ‘Plus’ packs should be aimed at making Windows and Office support changing time zone parameters less of a drama for both customers and Microsoft itself?
Microsoft does some good things (about which more next week) but let their customers get bogged down in this avoidable nonsense. Then Redmond wonders why people are reluctant to pay yet more money for Office upgrades.
