Is it possible to install time zones on a server?

Question

I recently had a program fail in a production server because the server was missing a time zone, so the following line threw an exception:

TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(date, TimeZoneInfo.Local, TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Argentina Standard Time"))

I fixed it exporting the time zone registry branch from a test server, importing it to the production server.

My question is, is it possible to install time zones selectively? How is it possible that one was missing?

Answer 1

The timezones and cultures that Microsoft installs in the registry are updated by standard patches. So depending on the version of windows (including patch levels) Some newer cultures and time zones may not be present...or if they are present they may have outdated definitions. These thing...particularly Time Zones....have a tendency to update fairly regularly.

I have a lot of pent up anger about the fact that they are stored in the registry and can only be added to with a admin account...but that is for another forum.