[Atagahi]

I installed Mac OS X Leopard using the thumbdrive option on my 32 GB SSD. It didn't boot quite right after Dell EFI installation, so I ended up doing an archive/reinstall of the OS.

Everything works fine now, except my Time/Date function doesn't work. It is grayed out in the Preference pane and the time cannot be updated/is grayed out, if accessed from the menu bar.

I looked for a .pref file to throw away and couldn't find one for date or time.

I hate to archive/reinstall again. Any ideas how to fix this?

[Durwood]

Change time/date in BIOS

[Atagahi]

The date and time are correct in the BIOS, but not at the OS level. I changed the BIOS to be sure. When I booted into Mac OS X, the date and time were incorrect and didn't reflect the changes I made.

[Matt_H]

I've never used OS X so I can't answer why your clock preferences are grayed out. However, I recently fiddled around with some date/time issues on Ubuntu and have some general clock information that may be useful.

In unix-like operating systems (of which I understand OS X to be under the hood), by default the clock function assumes that the BIOS clock is in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) and makes timezone and DST adjustments from that time to display what it thinks is local time. So, if you set the clock in your BIOS to UTC, perhaps it will display correctly in OS X. Just an idea.

FYI for anyone out there interested, Windows decided that it has to be different, so it works off of the assumption that the BIOS time is in local time, not UTC. Normally the end user won't notice, but if you dual-boot it is an issue. A common dual-boot issue is that Windows will go online to sync the time with a time server. Windows will take this time update and change the BIOS accordingly. Then, when you boot in to your other, unix-like OS, all of a sudden your clock is wrong because your BIOS clock has been changed. The way to fix this is to change the clock settings in your unix-like system to read the BIOS clock as local time and not UTC.

Like I said, none of this explains why your clock settings are greyed out. That's strange.

[mzito]

Did you try going into System Preferences/Date & Time? There is a checkbox to show and hide the date and time from the menu bar under the clock tab. Also, would you mind posting a screenshot of this?

[drheim]

I am having the same problem. If anyone finds a fix for this please reply. I dual boot OS X and Vista. Even if I uncheck the Apple option to automatically sync the time with ntp or whatever and I change the time in Apple manually to the correct time, then OS X always updates the time in the BIOS to be UTC and saves those changes in the BIOS. When I reboot into Vista it always thinks the BIOS time is local and has the wrong time until it syncs off the internet using ntp. I think the easiest way is to somehow disable Apple from making a change to the time in the BIOS. I am running bios A05.

[bsoplinger1]

I think I mentioned this before but perhaps it was in a PM instead of a thread here so I'll repeat myself…

Although Boot Camp itself won't work on our minis the Boot Camp Control Panel for Windows that you can install off your OS X install DVD will take care of the time issue. I assume it makes Windows deal with UTC time in BIOS but could be wrong. All I know is that once I installed the CP I didn't have time issues any more.

[Atagahi]

Sorry for not answering sooner. I had problems getting my password reset.

I updated the BIOS and also updated the OS to 10.5.7. Between the two of them my date/time issue was resolved along with slow general performance and my WiFi problems. Something in the OS must have been corrupted and was replaced during the update.