Fixing Time issues with Vista / XP & OSX

[Sub]

I put this here so everyone can find the answer easily.

 

*** WARNING: Editing your registry improperly can render your Windows installation inoperable. Proceed VERY carefully. I am not responsible if you mess something up. ***

 

The short solution for people who know how to edit the registry:

A DWORD key called

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSetControl\

TimeZoneInformation\RealTimeIsUniversal

 

needs to have the value of "1"

 

The step-by-step solution is as follows:

1. Boot Windows

 

2. Click Start --> Run and type regedit. Click OK

 

3. The Windows Registry Editor should pop up. Navigate within the explorer to:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet

then to:

 

Control\TimeZoneInformation

 

4. Click on the TimeZoneInformation "folder" from the navigation pane if you haven't already done so.

 

5. This assumes the correct key doesn't exist. If it does, you will just change the existing key's value: Right click on the white space within the folder (If you don't have a right mouse button, you may need to download a program called applemouse to emulate the "control-click" of the apple 1-button mouse). Select new --> DWORD Value. Title the key "RealTimeIsUniversal" (No quotes). Set the value to "1" (No quotes again). Hexidecimal should be fine.

 

6. Either reboot and set the clock in MacOS or set the clock in Windows. You should now be able to reboot into either OS and have a correct clock.

[Superhai]

This needs a sticky as I am sure this problem are the one that keep returning all the time. I want to add something which seem to very often be missing.

 

The problem with RealTimeIsUniversal (for the time being) is that it is a feature which MS has neglected to update (it is from the early NT 3.5 days). That means that in the winapi there are different ways to get the time and some reads from the bios clock and some from the os. The most obvious case where you see this problem is when you return from sleep or screensaver. The time is offset with your current timezone twice.

 

The easiest solution is to use the ntp service in windows and instead of updating once a week, it can update every 20 minutes or whatever fits you. To do that you have to make more registry entries:

 

1. In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient

 

2. Edit SpecialPollInterval to hex value 4B0 which in decimal is 1200 (I.e. 20 minutes)

 

3. Go into your Time and Date Settings --> Internet Time --> Change Settings

 

4. Where it most likely say time.windows.com change it to a more responsive ntp server (like pool.ntp.org or see http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Servers/St...mOneTimeServers )

 

5. Select Update Now and OK and you will also see that next update should be in a short while (i.e. 20 minutes if that what you choosed)

 

 

Fantastic right?...