Microsoft of course urges that all Windows XP users remain up-to-date with the latest "Service Packs" in order to ensure a properly working system. Current Windows XP Service Pack level is at SP2, meaning a full-updated system will have downloaded and installed SP2 either manually or via Windows Update.

However, it's no news in the audio community that many Windows XP-based DAW users have over the years elected to run their DAW machines at Windows XP SP1 level, on purpose, for a wide number of reasons speaking to software / driver compatibility, stability and, probably, just plain old FUD (that's "fear, uncertainty and doubt") about what the system upgrade will do to screw up that most holy of grails, the Working System.

Those who ride the trailing edge like this may today be facing the music, so to speak, in the form of an XP system clock that just doesn't know what time it is.

This weekend's Congress-mandated early change to Daylight Savings Time is not reflecting on at least two Windows XP SP1 machines here at Gearwire Labs. Clicking the clock and forcing the SP1 machines to talk to time.microsoft.com to update the system clock does not work, despite the cheery and incorrect success message from Microsoft's time sync application (click the clock, select the Internet Time tab and click the Update Now button).

Comparing the XP system time on the SP1 machines with the official US time from nist.time.gov shows the NIST time to be one hour ahead of the SP1 clocks.

XP SP1 users may need to make a decision about installing SP2 or face being out of sync with the rest of the world for at least the next three weeks -- at which time the expected DST changeover will occur and POSSIBLY the XP SP1 clocks will reflect the correct hour. Or not. Time will tell.