Windows 7 set to UTC RTC forcibly changes time

clocktimetime zoneutcwindows 7

I really want to make Windows 7 understand that RTC in using UTC instead of local time. I found a solution, except for it does not play well with time synchronization.

I have:

Modified the registry as needed and rebooted the system several times.
Under "Internet Time Synchronization" as available in "Internet Time" tab of "Date and time" dialog (due to localization naming may slightly differ) set hostname to "localhost" (which is not running NTP server), tried to sync, then unticked the checkbox.
Disabled the scheduled task to sync clock weekly and made sure W32Time service is stopped.
Just in case, re-checked that DHCP server does not announce any NTP servers or other extra options.
Ran w32tm /config /syncfromflags:NO. Although it reports success, I'm not sure this does anything useful, as the service's not running.
After all of the above's done, manually set the date/time and timezone to correct values.

Clock runs fine for a some time, however, after an hour or so it's reset to a wrong value. The change happens only once, then wrong time persists. The machine does not sleep or hibernate.

I've checked the Event Log and the only messages are from Kernel-General, mentioning just the fact system time was changed, but no reason why did that happen. Enabling privilege use and process spawn audit logs does not reveal any activity near the time clock jumps – no privilege elevations near the jump, and the only process spawn is taskhost.exe right after the clock changes (which is, I persume, normal).

How could I completely disable this annoying behaviour? I suspect this happens when Windows tries to update hardware clock, but I'm not really sure. If that's the case then I'm fine with even never syncing time back to hardware clock.

Best Answer

Just to clarify your hardware clock is to UTC +0 offset. Have you set Windows Date and Time "Timezone" to UTC - if not what timezone location have you selected and what is the UTC offset?

If Timezone location in windows is set to UTC +0 then try testing with the NTP server to uk.pool.ntp.org see if it makes a difference.

Could it be a third party anti-virus doing a sync?

Related Solutions

Windows 7 thinks that the UTC+1 Amsterdam time zone is really an UTC+10 time zone

You probably haven't told your Windows PC what part of the world you're in. Without that information it can't offset the "Internet time" to the correct value.

Right-click the clock in the bottom right-hand corner
Choose the menu option "Adjust date/time"
Click the button [Change time zone...]
Choose the correct capital city of other significant town for the region that you are in
If your region uses Daylight Saving Time (i.e. the time changes by an hour twice a year), tick that box too

Since your PC is being told its clock is 9 hours behind, likely candidates for your local region are Tokyo, Seoul or Yakutsk. Alternatively, if I've misunderstood your explanation of which way the clock is wrong, you might be in Alaska.

Based our investigations it seems that your Amsterdam entry in the timezone database may be corrupted. This article from the Microsoft Technet gives a little explanation of the Timezone database in the registry. Looking at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones I can find an entry for W. Europe Standard Time that corresponds to the Amsterdam timezone. Here are entries from a Windows 7 PC that appear to work correctly:

Display     REG_SZ     (UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
Dlt         REG_SZ     W. Europe Daylight Time
MUI_Display REG_SZ     @tzred.dll,-320
MUI_Dlt     REG_SZ     @tzres.dll,-321
MUI_Std     REG_SZ     @tzres.dll,-322
Std         REG_SZ     W. Europe Standard Time
TZI         REG_BINARY C4 FF FF FF 00 00 00 00 C4 FF FF FF 00 00 0A 00 00 00 05 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 05 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Windows 10 time falling an hour behind when dual booting

Had this issue on my laptop and regular PC (both dual boot Windows 10 and Xubuntu) - the time was always 1 hour behind.

Before I give my solution, just to be clear;

Yes, BIOS showed the correct time
No, the BIOS battery was not empty
Yes, tried both with Daylight savings on and off
Yes, my time zone was set correctly
Yes, I did try different time zones as well
No, I did not mess up my region settings
Yes, I even changed time manually - but it would switch back nevertheless

What worked for me, was the following; change the "Internet time" settings to time.nist.gov.

Go to Control Panel
Go to Clock, language and region
Select "Set the time and date"
In the pop-up, go to tab "Internet time"
Select "Change settings"
Select the server time.nist.gov.

Time is now shown correctly again, even after restart.

If you are still having issues with time after these steps verify the Windows Time Service is running (w32Time)

Open the Start menu and type "Services"
From The list of options available select "Services"
Click on any service in the list and then type "win" to be taken to the services with a name beginning "Windows"
Find the "Windows Time" service and right click on it and open properties.
Ensure the "Startup Type" is set to "Automatic" and then make sure you "Start" the service.

This should ensure that if you are using NTP (Internet Time) then you should be able to sync your clock on startup.

Related Question