Why My Windows 2003 Server is One Hour Slower?

Energy Policy Act of 2005 introduced new start and end dates of DST (Daylight Saving Time), which began in 2007.  It had cost massive headaches and extra works to all IT pros all over the world back then, except those that don’t observe the DST, mostly in Asia and Africa. And the headache still didn’t want to go away.

I have all my servers and workstations patched before the day kicked in in 2007. And they all work great. However, I noticed several new installed Windows 2003 servers that didn’t turn their clock 1 hour ahead when the spring time started about two weeks ago. These servers all have service pack 2 installed as well as the latest patches. As far as I know, the new DST patch should be all included in this version of service pack. So why these servers ran one hour slower?

I scratched my head for a bit and decided to go to Microsoft’s DST help and support center to check out if there are anything I missed. It actually does have quite a bit new updated information with newer patches released end of 2008 available for all its OS platforms. I followed the wizard and downloaded the 2003 standard x86 version. Bingo, that was it. It solved the problem without booting the server. The clock was forced to move one hour forward.  These servers finally were caught up.

So if somehow you happen to get to the same trap, go to the site mentioned above and download the latest patch that I am sure will fix the time issue for you.