Exchange DST Outlook Tool - Help

[kevin97]

Hi tek-tips,

I'm in desperate need of help.

I ran the exchange dst outlook tool on some clients. Half of the extraction was successful, but the other half the tool could not detect the timezone information from the mailboxes.

I ran the batch file and half of the mailboxes we're updates.

I edited the Mailboxes_1 file and I manually added the mailboxes that we're not detected earlier. All of my users are in EST, so I modified the file and added Eastern Standard Time.

I re-ran the batch for the remaining users with success.

Most of the users had appoinments. Before I ran the utlities, I created some test appointments on March 11 and 12 for my personal mailbox.

After I ran the batch, it created a txt file with my profile and the changes that we're made. The problem is, the changes we're off.

I had an appointment set for 6:00AM on March the 12.

This is what the text file indicated for my test app't:

Subject: test
Old Start Time: Monday, March 12, 2007 11:00:00 AM
New Start Time: Monday, March 12, 2007 10:00:00 AM
Old End Time: Monday, March 12, 2007 11:30:00 AM
New End Time: Monday, March 12, 2007 10:30:00 AM
Recurring: No
Result: Success

So it looks like it's 5 hours off...

Anyone have any ideas on whats going on? I was in Outlook and I changed my windows timing to March 12, the appointments came up but the time didn't change, it was still at 6:00AM.

Any ideas?

 

[ShackDaddy]

What do you mean, "it was still at 6:00am." Isn't that what you said was the correct time? What's your goal, to get the text file right (which seems to be merely displaying GMT) or to get the appointment right?

Did you use the /ONLYCREATEDPREPATCH switch?

Can you verify that your workstation isn't on GMT?

Can you boil this down to a few sentences describing what exactly is broken right now? Focus on the results, not the logs.


ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[kevin97]

yes 6 is the correct time. I was just doing some testing to determine if anything odd would happen.

I was just worried about the timing that is displayed in the text file. For my test job, I expected to see 6:00 in the text file. I was reading some more and I read that exchange stores the timing in UTC. If thats the case, then everything makes sence and the update ran with success.

The workstations are set to GMT-05:00 (Eastern Standard Time)

 

[kevin97]

Can anyone confirm that the result is ok?

I did not use the ONLYCREATEDPREPATCH switch. Should I re-run the tool with the switch enabled?

 

[ShackDaddy]

Using the switch keeps the tool from altering appointments that were made after the DST patch was installed. If you don't use the switch, those appointments get moved improperly. Rerunning the tool with the switch will not fix anything. What you need to look at are the appointments that were created after the DST patch was installed, but before you ran the tool, because the tool will have screwed up non-recurring appointments that fit those criteria.

Here's a script I wrote that makes it easy to check the install date of the patch on multiple XP/2003 systems if you aren't running WSUS:

'=========================================================================
' NAME: <CheckForDSTFix.vbs>
'
' Author: Dave Shackelford
' DATE  : 3/05/2007
'
' COMMENT: This script cycles through a list of computers
' in a local text file (c:\hostlist.txt, list them in a single column) and
' uses WMI to determine whether the DST patch is installed. Only applies
' applies to W2003/XP systems
'
'==========================================================================

Option Explicit

Dim strComputer
Dim objWmiService
Dim wmiNS
Dim wmiQuery
Dim objItem
Dim colItems
Dim txtfile
Dim objFSO
Dim objTextFile

Const ForReading = 1
txtfile = "c:\hostlist.txt"

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objTextfile = objFSO.OpenTextFile (Txtfile, ForReading)

Do Until objTextfile.AtEndofStream

strComputer = objTextFile.Readline

wmiNS = "\root\cimv2"
wmiQuery = "Select * from Win32_QuickFixEngineering"

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & wmiNS)
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery(wmiQuery)

For Each objItem in colItems

If objItem.HotFixId = "KB931836" Then
WScript.Echo "CSName: " & objItem.CSName
WScript.Echo "Description: " & objItem.Description
WScript.Echo "FixComments: " & objItem.FixComments
WScript.Echo "HotFixID: " & objItem.HotFixID
WScript.Echo "InstalledBy: " & objItem.InstalledBy
WScript.Echo "InstalledOn: " & objItem.InstalledOn
WScript.Echo "ServicePackInEffect: " & objItem.ServicePackInEffect
WScript.Echo
Else
End If
Next
Loop

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting