Updating Your System Clock

When you move from standard time into daylight saving time or vice versa, the Event Viewer, one of the administrative tools in the Microsoft Management Console, changes the displayed Time (and possibly Date) values for events that have already occurred.

For example, if an event occurred at 6 P.M. in standard time, after you move into daylight saving time that event will appear as if it had occurred at 7 P.M. That’s because Event Viewer applies a single offset from Greenwich mean time to all events in its logs.

If you monitor events on remote computers in other time zones, be aware that Event Viewer always displays those event dates and times in your (local) time zone. It records occurrences in Greenwich mean time but applies your time zone’s Greenwich mean time offset for display purposes.

For example, an event occurring at noon in New York will be reported in Los Angeles as having occurred at 9 A.M.

If you change the clock on your system, the times reported in event logs do not change, because your offset from Greenwich mean time has not changed. If you change your time zone, however, Event Viewer applies the new offset and changes the times displayed for all events in the log.