Bootcamp Time Difference Between Mac OS And Windows

This is what you need to do in order to fix the time when booting in Mac OS:

1. Create new file /sbin/localtime-toggle with the following contents:

#!/bin/sh

to_utc() {
echo "localtime-toggle: Toggling to UTC."
date -f %m%d%H%M%Y `date -u +%m%d%H%M%Y`
}

to_localtime() {
echo "localtime-toggle: Toggling to localtime."
date -u -f %m%d%H%M%Y `date +%m%d%H%M%Y`
}

trap 'to_localtime; exit' term
to_utc
{ while true; do sleep 86400; done; } &
wait

2. Ensure that localtime-toggle is executable:

chmod +x /sbin/localtime-toggle

3. Create new file /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.osx86.localtime-toggle.plist with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
   <key>Label</key>
   <string>org.osx86.localtime-toggle</string>
   <key>Program</key>
   <string>/sbin/localtime-toggle</string>
   <key>KeepAlive</key>
   <true/>
   <key>RunAtLoad</key>
   <true/>
   <key>HopefullyExitsFirst</key>
   <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

4. Reboot.
At this point, your computer’s clock should correctly be set to UTC as Leopard boots, and reset back to local time as Leopard shuts down.

Comments

One response to “Bootcamp Time Difference Between Mac OS And Windows”

  1. Scott Avatar
    Scott

    A less-intrusive solution is to set a registry setting in Windows to allow it to use a UTC system clock:

    http://superuser.com/questions/185773/does-windows-7-support-utc-as-bios-time

    This way it will work in both Windows and Mac without any further alteration (albiet with a known bug during daylight saving changeover).

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