Adding New Timezones to Windows XP/Windows Server 2003 Sysprep.inf deployments
Hello, my name is Scott McArthur. I am a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the Windows group and today’s blog will cover specifying new and updated timezones in sysprep.inf for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
When deploying Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 with a sysprep image you must specify the timezone entry. For example
| [GuiUnattended] Timezone=035 |
The deploy.chm that ships in the deploy.cab has a listing of timezones but there have been changes since those helpfiles were created. For example there is a new time zone called “Morocco Standard Time”. To determine the entry to add do the following 1. Install Windows XP/Windows Server 2003 and install all updates including the latest Daylight Savings Time (DST) update. See http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst for more information
2. Open regedit.exe
3. Browse to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones\
4. Choose the timezone you are looking for
5. Under the timezone click the Index registry key and note the decimal number in parenthesis
6. In your sysprep.inf add the following
| [GuiUnattended] Timezone=-2147483725 |
Note: The minus in front of the number needs to be included If you have the hex value for Index you can also convert it using calc.exe using the following steps
1. Open calc.exe
2. Click Hex
3. Input the hex value. For example 0x8000004d
4. Click Dec
5. You will get the decimal value, 2147483725
Using this process you can add any new timezones to your sysprep.inf. Note that Windows Vista and later uses a different syntax for timezones so this issue only applies to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
Scott McArthur
Senior Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Platforms Support
