Few major daylight-saving time problems reported

Administrators raced to update their IT infrastructure to accommodate the time change, which came three weeks earlier than normal this year as part of the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005's aim to curb Americans’ energy consumption.

"We’re not seeing any consistency of complaints nor are we seeing any major problems," Ken McGee, vice president and research fellow at Gartner, told SCMagazine.com today. "This is a big pain in the neck and that’s all it’s gonna be."

There were some instances of downtime associated with the changeover.

A Microsoft TechNet blog reported late Sunday that some computers running Windows 2003, XP and 2000 did not automatically update time-zone changes.

"Currently, there are a relatively small number of isolated incidents where updates are not being implemented, and we have provided information on how to remediate this issue on our DST TechNet blog," a Microsoft spokesman told SCMagazine.com.

The SANS Internet Storm Center said many of the issues appear to be associated with cellular and VoIP-enabled phones. But the organisation also received word that Symantec Backup versions 10d and 10.1 and APC power management software did not properly update.

McGee said those responsible for creating and patching systems with the DST updates should have started working sooner – but in the end, everything turned out fine.

"The vendors get a D-minus mark for their state of readiness, and the end users get a D-minus for their state of readiness," he said. "But when you look at it from a results perspective, vendors and users got an A."

Still, the rushed approach to the problem should signal to Congress that it needs more expert IT input before enacting laws such as the Energy Policy Act, said McGee.

"Wake up Congress," he said.

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