Meetings are unexpectedly moved one hour ahead in the last week of October 2006 in Exchange Server 2003

[The_Exchange_Team]

Seeing that we have seen some support calls on this already, we wanted to highlight a KB article that was written about the above mentioned issue. The article in question is:

Meetings are unexpectedly moved one hour ahead in the last week of October in Exchange Server 2003

Here's a little FAQ on this:

1. Where do I need to put this fix?
You need to put it on the machines where CDO applications run. See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;917481 for more details.

2. Is OWA affected?
Yes. CDO is used for free/busy information so there could be some impact here.

3. What about Outlook clients?
Outlook does not use CDO for creating appointments, but if the appointment was created by CDO for next week then it could show incorrectly in Outlook.

4. Will the problem happen next year?
No. The reason this is happening is because the transition that is hard coded into CDO for the DST transition for GMT is incorrect. The transition in CDO is coded for the 4th Sunday in October and in most years this is also the LAST Sunday in October, which is the correct day for the transition. However, in 2005 and 2006 there were 5 Sundays in October so the transition date in CDO was incorrect which results in some appointments being 1 hour out. This problem will disappear once DST ends on the 29th October. The next time this issue will happen is 2010.

5. I am in XYZ timezone, will this affect me?
Only if you are using CDO to schedule meeting requests in the GMT timezone, then you could be affected. Please check the KB to see if your timezone has had a fix to it.

6. What hotfixes are available for this issue?
Exchange 2003 POST SP2 - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;910268
(there is no post SP1 fix for this. SP2 has been out for nearly a year now!)

Exchange 2000 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888606
Exchange 5.5 fix here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837010

7. What about appointments already created?
Preliminary reports suggest that one-off appointments created using CDO will be incorrect next week, recurring appointments with an occurrence next week will be out for next week only but recurring appointments starting from next week will be one hour off for all occurrences.

Thanks to Jonathan Unwin for help in creating this FAQ!

- Paul Flaherty

[#2]

So why isn't the hotfix available to download yet ?  Do we have to call microsoft for it ?!

[#3]

DaWolfey,

We do not post every single hotfix for download, depending on several factors. This should not be a problem though, as we do not charge you for hotfixes of course. That way, we can also contact you if we find that there is a problem with the hotfix and get you a newer one.

[#4]

How long has this problem been known about?  I see the files listed in the hotfix are from 2005

[#5]

So the code only runs against appointments created with CDO apps like OWA, PDA and blackberries and to take place between 22/10/2006 and 29/10/2006.

Can we get a count of the number of items changed?

Why does the code only run for a weeks worth of appointments? rather than the 6months of BST that need to be corrected? either tha or it knows to use local time so after 29th October it is already factored in to the equation.

 

[#6]

replace 6months of with 6months after

[#7]

We are using CDO to access the headers of Email messages through VBScript at work and we have noticed this also affects email messages.  If you use CDO to pull the time sent it will be 1 hour out.

[#8]

Called Micosoft about this fix for Exchange 5.5 and said that I could not have it because you dont support it. Why put this out if I cant get the fix???? fwiw, I am in the process of upgrading

[#9]

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