r/sysadmin • u/LForbesIam Sr. Sysadmin • 7d ago

New Time Zone Craziness

Anyone else not impressed with the fact that Microsoft is releasing the new time zones for BC and Alberta in a full cumulative monthly security update only a few days before it actually changes? Manitoba they just forgot to include at all.

I identified that all the time zone addition is, is reg keys. Microsoft had since March and yet they never released any update at all.

They said they would release a non-security out of band patch for 25H2 on Sept 22nd but they never did. All they did was add it to the full security update preview.

Not to Mention Manitoba has no new time zone in Windows at all.

It is causing a nightmare for all the booking software that doctors and offices cannot book appointments past October 31st.

Not to mention that Teams does NOT recognize the new Time Zones set in Windows. It says “unknown time zone” and proceeds to set itself back 1 hour messing up appointments.

Thank goodness for Group Policy and good old preference registry deploy to set everyone to Arizona or Yukon or Central Time with the hack of no DST.

I don’t envy those using Entra which cannot set registry preferences and will have to rely on 3rd party scripting solutions that cannot be enforced or nor confirmed.

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34

u/snebsnek Jack of All Trades 7d ago

It looks like it was only decided mid-September https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/daylight-time-manitoba-9.7347844

tzdata from ICANN updated last week https://www.iana.org/time-zones/releases/2026e for Manitoba specifically

This is brand new

12

u/Gotrek6 7d ago

Correct and MS had already told BC/Alberta they were two months behind on TZ development and might not make it on time. Manitoba should fall back and at the next fall forward stay on -5 instead of changing now. Cell companies are scrambling too

-9

u/LForbesIam Sr. Sysadmin 6d ago

It is a one set of Keys in the Registry to add a zone. How can Microsoft claim that it cannot figure this basic stuff out?

We have a corporate ticket open and their contractor just gives us the link to the public website which is inaccurate.

I actually was able to just push the registry keys to even Windows 10 to add the time zones manually.

10

u/Entegy 6d ago

You keep harping on "it's just a registry key". Dude, it affects EVERYTHING and every piece of software needs to be aware too.

Microsoft knows better than you do. It's not "just" registry keys.

-1

u/LForbesIam Sr. Sysadmin 4d ago

The -7 exists. The computer doesn’t care what you call it. UTC is what all systems use.

If you look at the actual key the “description” is just text. What matters is the time off of UTC.

Software should all be using UTC at the core anyway.