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Dual booting Windows 10 + Linux - can I tell Windows 10 to use UTC hardware clock and adapt?

Hi folks,

I have two operating systems on my computer. Ubuntu "Wily" Linux 15.10 and Windows 10 (It was certainly an experience upgrading from a clean Win7 SP1... in the end, using the media creation tool to make an ISO, then installing from that disc and skipping updates until after install is what finally got me through, but I digress :) .. Points for the Windows installer not touching GRUB bootloader at all).

All unix/linux style operating systems tend to set the hardware clock to UTC and then adjust what's displayed based upon either system or user timezone preferences.

Windows on the other hand, sets the time to the current locale, including any DST shifts.

When rebooting back and forth between Windows and Linux, subsequently, my clock can bounce around a bit.

Rather than cheating and putting my Windows install into UTC without DST, I thought I might see if it's still possible to get Windows to play nice with other operating systems, regarding the clock.

I have read posts for previous versions of Windows that suggest that there is a way to tell Windows to use UTC hardware clock, but that the time update service doesn't play nice with this. That said, the versions of Windows being mentioned in such posts are generally XP and 7.

What's the current situation with Windows 10 regarding setting the hardware clock to UTC?

Hi Anthony,

Thank you for posting on Microsoft Communities.

I will be glad to help you with the issue you have with the computer. I  understand the frustration when things don't work the way it should.

I suggest you to follow the below registry changes for Windows to interpret the hardware clock as UTC time:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation]
"RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001


Just save the above reg script into a .reg file and import it to set your clock to UTC time. You can still set your timezone for the clock and have the correct time displayed

Registry disclaimer

Note: This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

322756 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/ )

How to back up and restore the registry in Windows.

Please reply with the results, we will be glad to help you further.

Thank you.

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Question Info

Last updated May 4, 2024 Views 16,821 Applies to: