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| Change The Date & Time |
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How To August 1999 • Vol.5 Issue 8 |
 Change The Date & Time | ||
 If you want your computer and your applications to work correctly, then it is always a good idea to keep your computer's clock and calendar current. Your system probably uses the date and time to stamp E-mail messages, to insert information into spreadsheets, and to mark the last time you modified a file.  Set The Date & Time. Windows 95/98 (Win95/98) offers two easy ways to change the date and time. The first is by opening the Start menu (click the Start button), Settings, Control Panel, and then Date/Time. Click the Date & Time tab in the Date/Time Properties dialog box. Next, select the month by clicking the down arrow in the drop-down list. Then, select the date by clicking the calendar. To change the year, you either highlight the existing year and type in another or you use the up and down arrows to move to the correct year. To change the time, you can once again either highlight the time and type in the correct time or you highlight the hour, minute, or second and use the buttons to move to the correct time. The second way to change the date is through DOS. First, reboot your computer in DOS by clicking the Start button and selecting Shut Down. Then, click the Restart In MS-DOS Mode radio button and click OK. Next, type date and press ENTER. DOS will display the current date and ask you to enter the new date according to month (mm), day (dd), and year (yy). Type in the date you want, such as 12-22-99, and press ENTER. If you want to make sure the change took place, type date again and press ENTER. The date DOS displays should be the date you typed in. To change the time, type time and press ENTER. DOS will then show you the hour (hh), minute (mm), seconds (ss), tenths of a second, and whether it is a.m. (a) or p.m. (p). Enter the new time in the same manner, such as 2:32:35p, and press ENTER. You can leave off the seconds, but you must enter a for a.m. or p for p.m. Daylight-Saving Time. Twice a year, most of us go through the hassle of changing the time on clocks in our homes, cars, and offices for daylight-saving time. While you will have to manually reset most of your clocks, there is at least one that you won't have to worry about: your computer's clock. Each time daylight-saving time rolls around, the New Clock Settings confirmation dialog box should pop up on your monitor's screen. This box informs you that Windows has updated your clock, and it asks you to verify the time. If Windows does not automatically handle this task, open the Control Panel and double-click the Date/Time icon. Click the Time Zone tab, check the Automatically Adjust Clock For Daylight Saving Changes box, and click the OK button. After that, Windows will make the change to daylight-saving time automatically.
Time Zones. While you are on the Time Zone tab, you should check to make sure Windows is using the right time zone. The current time zone is highlighted at the top of the window. If the time zone is wrong, you will need to select a different zone. Click the down arrow next to the current time zone to view a list of time zones. Use the scroll bars to the side of the list to view all the choices. When you find the correct time zone, click it and then click the OK button to implement your changes. ( NOTE: After you change your time zone, Windows will not automatically adjust the time to conform with the new time zone. You must reset the clock yourself.) Utilities. Have you noticed that shortly after you set your computer's clock the time is off again? Your computer's clock is not as accurate as you might think. One solution is to periodically reset your clock. Alternatively, you can use a program to automate the process. There are numerous free and low-cost programs for this purpose. You can find many of them listed at Stan's Computer Clock Synchronization Page (http://www.txdirect.net/users/sfisher/clock.html). All these utilities work in a similar manner. They call up one of several services designed specifically to supply accurate time to computers. Once the service sends the time, the utility automatically resets your clock. Depending on how you connect to the Internet, you can generally configure the utility to run automatically when you boot or you can run it in the background while you are on the Internet.  by Ronny Richardson |
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