Recently in windows Category

So, I've been digging into why Windows XP can't deal with a system clock set in UTC. Apparently, it even keeps its internal time as UTC, but it still won't deal with a system clock set to non-local time.

I found this article from an MSDN blog, which gives a decent summary of the reasons why. Basically, it would break support for some pre Windows NT/XP things. Well, XP and Vista already break enough other things compatability-wise that this shouldn't be such an issue now.

I also found this nice article on all the reasons it should be changed.

Apparently, a registry key does exist that once allowed people to use a system clock set to UTC, but it isn't documented, and most of the newer Windows code hasn't been updated to support it. No word on if Vista does a better job at this. Has anyone else had luck getting windows to cope with a UTC system clock?

Just saw this writeup of the new content protection and security features in Vista. I had already heard that they were going to disable OpenGL support, but I didn’t quite realize that their new “features” went to this extreme. I haven’t read through the linked Microsoft docs yet, but my first impression is that I really don’t wanna try out Vista any time soon.

Anyone else out there have any more insight or info about this topic?

Finally found a few decent ways to get around that obnoxious behavior of popping up the same dialog every 10 minutes, even after I said “No” over on the Coding Horror blog.

The quick `n easy way is to run net stop wuauserv. This will stop the reminders, as well as auto updates, until you reboot.

To make it less obnoxious in a few ways in the future, I found the “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations” options to fit the bill pretty well. It prevents automated reboots only if someone is logged in. So, my unattended workstation at work will reboot after auto updates, but my desktop at home will wait until I tell it to.

I found another nice little read on the subject on the Tim Rains’ MSDN blog.