# Change motherboard time from UTC to LOCAL in bsdinstall



## DesktopVotary (May 9, 2021)

Made a mistake in *bsdinstall* of choosing 'motherboard time is set to UTC' instead of LOCAL time during a fresh install of FreeBSD 13.0 
This is a problem since I dual boot Windows which always expects mobo time to be local and changes the time automatically.
Tried *bsdinstall time* but this only changes the time. All I need to do is have FreeBSD look at mobo time as LOCAL time so that GNOME's clock does not subtract time in accordence to my timezone.
Where is this setting stored or how can I change it?


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## mer (May 9, 2021)

This may help:









						Adjust time when dual booting with Windows 10 (CMOS clock set to local time)
					

AFAIK, FreeBSD prefers the hardware (CMOS) clock to be set to UTC, but it is possible to select that it is set to local time during the installation.  That is what I did, as I am dual booting (actually, triple) FreeBSD with Windows 10 (and Void Linux). Now the time displayed is incorrect in...




					forums.freebsd.org


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## mickey (May 9, 2021)

DesktopVotary said:


> Made a mistake in *bsdinstall* of choosing 'motherboard time is set to UTC' instead of LOCAL time during a fresh install of FreeBSD 13.0
> This is a problem since I dual boot Windows which always expects mobo time to be local and changes the time automatically.


You can make Windows interpret the mainboard's time as UTC too with a simple registry setting. Here is a batch file to do it, alternatively just add/change the value using `REGEDIT`.

```
@ECHO OFF
ECHO Configuring Windows to interpret CMOS clock as UTC ...
REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation" /V "RealTimeIsUniversal" /T REG_DWORD /D 0x00000001 /F
ECHO Done - Reboot for the change to take effect.

PAUSE
```

If you really prefer to have your CMOS clock use local time instead of UTC, create an empty file /etc/wall_cmos_clock, see adjkerntz(8).


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## SirDice (May 9, 2021)

DesktopVotary said:


> Where is this setting stored or how can I change it?


tzsetup(8)


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## DesktopVotary (May 15, 2021)

mickey said:


> You can make Windows interpret the mainboard's time as UTC too with a simple registry setting. Here is a batch file to do it, alternatively just add/change the value using `REGEDIT`.
> 
> ```
> @ECHO OFF
> ...


It makes a lot of sense to have Windows interpret the hardware time as UTC.
`REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation" /V "RealTimeIsUniversal" /T REG_DWORD /D 0x00000001 /F`worked like a charm. 
I really like this solution. 
Thanks, mickey


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