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XAMPP Timezone Notes

During the installation process of XAMPP you will be presented with various dialogue boxes. One such dialogue states that the timezone values in both php.ini and my.ini have been set to “America/Chicago” and that you should change them if they are not correct. The problem is you’re not told where you can easily find those files.

Before you do anything you’ll need the timezone information applicable to you. Head over to http://us2.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php where you will find a list of supported timezones divided by various geographic regions. I chose “America”. Then, you will be presented with a list of timezones under the heading “America”. I chose “America/Winnipeg” – select the one applicable to you and make note of it's name.

Navigate to C:\xampp\php\php.ini and open the file in a plain text editor such as Notepad. Look for the following …

[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
date.timezone = "America/Chicago"

Change “America/Chicago” to the proper value. In my case it is “America/Winnipeg”. Save the file and restart Apache (if it is running) in order for the change to take effect.

Next, navigate to C:\xampp\mysql\bin\my.ini and open the file in a plain text editor such as Notepad. Look for the following …

default-time-zone       = "America/Chicago"

Again change the value to the one applicable to you. Save the file and restart MySQL (if it is running) in order for the change to take effect.