Daylight Saving Chaos

Just saw this post from Stilgherrian on the mess caused by a this-year-only change in the date for transitioning from DST back to standard time in Australia.

Key points:

• Because the Windows fix wasn’t security-related, it wasn’t labelled “critical” — so it wasn’t downloaded automatically by Windows Update.


• Even downloading the daylight saving Hotfix and digesting Microsoft’s easy to follow (ahem!) overview wan’t enough. [Stilgherrian's] own properly-patched Windows XP test computer still reverted to standard time anyway.


• Microsoft’s patch has to be removed [next year], because Windows can’t cope with different rules for different years.

Macs and Unixes also had problems.

I've added Stilgherrian's post to the "Cautionary Tales" page of the Chronos web site.

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• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site