Does Windows 8 support UTC as BIOS time?

Is there any way to use Windows 8 with time in UTC in BIOS? I know there is a way to do it in Windows 7 (in this question: Does Windows 7 support UTC as BIOS time?), but this solution makes my system unbootable.

Windows expects the bios clock to be set to local time by default. In Windows 7 and before, there was a registry hack to change this behavior so that it could expect UTC – is there an equivalent in Windows 8?


Yes. Just follow these steps:

  1. Open regedit.

  2. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation

  3. Right-click in the white area and select New --> DWORD (32-bit Value)

  4. Name the key RealTimeIsUniversal.

  5. Double-click on it and set its value to 1.


@Zuck's answer is fine, but much quicker via the Command Line Interface (CLI).

Open up cmd as Administrator then run:

reg ADD HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation /t REG_DWORD /v RealTimeIsUniversal /d 1