Effective April 15, 2009, Daylight Saving Time (DST) has been re-introduced in Pakistan meaning that all watches, clocks and mobile phones needed to be shifted one hour ahead. The same goes for our computers at home and work as well. Microsoft has recently rolled out a hotfix for enabling DST changes for Windows Vista and Windows Server users in Pakistan but there has not been a release for Windows XP users yet.

I thought I would repost this short tutorial from last year, to help everyone to make the required changes to their computers manually so that they are synchronized with DST.

First of all, you would require a Time Zone Editor tool, which is available for download here. Download the file onto your system. After downloading, double click on the file and it would ask for a location to extract the 2 files within it. Extract them to a location of your choice. Of the 2 files, one is tzedit.exe which is the file you would require.

Note: Since the government of Pakistan has not yet announced when DST shall end this year, dates used in the tutorial below are from last year. (Update on 18th April, 2009: DST shall remain in effect in Pakistan till October 31st, 2009)

To manually modify time zone settings by using the Time Zone Editor, follow these steps:

1. Start Time Zone Editor [tzedit.exe]

2. In the Time Zones list, select a time zone, and then click Edit. For example, for Pakistani’s to make the required change, click (GMT +05:00) Islamabad, Karachi and then click Edit.

3. In the Edit Time Zone dialog box, click to select the Automatically set Daylight Saving Time check box.

4. Specify the correct daylight saving time start date and end date. To do this, follow these steps:

a. In the Start Day box, click the number of the day, the corresponding day of the week, and the month that you want. e.g. for us in Pakistan, click First, click Sunday, and then click June.
b. Select the time that you want to start daylight saving time. For example, select 12:00:59 A.M.
c. In the Last Day box, click the number of the day, the corresponding day of the week, and the month that you want. e.g. for us in Pakistan, click Last, click Sunday, and then click August.
d. Select the time that you want to end daylight saving time. For example, select 12:00:59 A.M.
e. In the Daylight Bias list, select how long you want the time to change when daylight saving time is in effect. To set the clock forward 1 hour, leave the default setting of +1:00.
f. Click OK.

g. Click Start, point to Settings, point to Control Panel, and then double-click Date/Time.
h. Click the Time Zone tab.
i. Select a different time zone than the (GMT +05:00) Islamabad, Karachi time zone, and then click Apply.
j. Click (GMT +05:00) Islamabad, Karachi and then click OK.


Note: Steps 4i and 4j are required for the new changes to take effect.

In this example, steps 4a through 4f update the time zone database. Steps 4g through 4j force Windows to read the time zone database and copy the updated information into the TimeZoneInformation registry key in the current control set.

I hope the following screenshots help you as well. Before saving, your changes should look like those shown in the second image. Click on the images to view them in full size.

Screenshot 1

Update (18th April, 2009): just a few hours ago, Microsoft announced that they have released a hotfix for Windows XP users too. Further details are covered in this post.

References:

Tutorial: Configuring your Windows XP systems for Daylight Saving Time in Pakistan

How to configure Daylight Saving Time (DST) for Microsoft Windows operating systems in Pakistan

Similar Articles at PakFellows Blog: