file timestamps advanced one hour after DST

[Vic Vega]

The configuration:
Windows XP Pro SP2 + a few hotfixes
DST patch applied ~10 days ago
standalone workstation, no domain
Eastern time zone set, auto-adjust to DST set
all disks formatted NTFS

The issue:
My system clock was correct Sunday morning, and has been correct since. No
problems there. However, the timestamp of any file I saved on my system's
disks prior to the DST change is fast by one hour. I discovered this when
I wanted to verify that I copied all the files from an SD card to disk.
The SD card files had correct timestamps, but the on-disk copies of the
files are wrong. To the best that I can tell, _all_ the files I created
during standard time are wrong by one hour, regardless of file type or the
application which created them. This applies to files which were created
and have always been on an NTFS volume.

I believe my event log timestamps are off by an hour as well.

I've never seen anything like this before. What am I doing wrong? Aside
from living with this substantial irritation, or monkeying with the clock
and/or time zone settings, can I do anything else to fix this?

 

[Vic Vega]

I guess the putrefaction of my brain is well advanced, as
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q129574/ (last updated Feb 20th, 2007) has
this to say:

"When Windows NT automatically adjusts for daylight saving time, the times
on files on Windows NT file system (NTFS) partitions and the events in the
event logs are retroactively shifted by one hour, even though the files and
event records were created before the daylight saving time change."

How I managed to miss that in 12+ years of using NT 3.x-4.0/2000/XP is
something I'd best not ponder, else I would lose the will to live.

 

[Curt Christianson]

Don't be so hard on yourself Vic. ;-)

--
HTH,
Curt

Windows Support Center
http://aumha.org/