How to Set (or Change) Your Clock on a Windows PC

As step by step tutorial on how to reset the clock in corner of your screen on your Windows-based PC.

Staring at a wrong time on your computer screen is worse than watching your VCR blink '12:00'. Whether you fouled it up yourself, or just need to change it because Daylight Savings time has started or ended, I can show you how to reset it.

Begin by making sure your computer is on and that you can see your clock in the bottom right hand corner of your Windows screen. If someone has changed the settings on your computer it might be appearing on the left or on the top, but if you haven't made any intentional changes its probably right there in the bottom right-hand corner.

Roll your mouse down so it hovers over the current time and then double-click with your left mouse button. This will pop up a window marked 'Date and Time Properties. It has three tabs, 'Date & Time', 'Time Zone' and 'Internet Time'. Make sure that you have selected the tab that says 'Date & Time'.

Within the 'Date & Time' tab you will see two boxes, one that says 'Date' and one that says 'Time'. We'll start by correcting the date. Within the date box you'll see three boxes, a small one that has the month in it with a drop down list, a small one with the year in it, and a larger one that shows one month's worth of calendar. The calendar that is showing is whatever month is showing in the two small boxes above.

Click on the box that shows months, and then click on the little down-arrow, and you'll get a drop down list of all twelve months. Roll your mouse down so that it highlights whichever month you are trying to set it for, and click once with your left mouse-button. Then go to the other small box and you can either click in that box and type over to change to the year that you want, or you can use the little up and down buttons to move up or down one year at a time.

Once those two boxes are correct you'll have that month's calendar showing in the larger box and one of the days on that calendar will be highlighted in blue. That blue one is the day that your system believes is the current date. If the blue box that is highlighted now isn't the correct date, just roll your mouse over the current date and click once with your left mouse-button. The date that you just clicked over should turn blue.

Now we'll look at the other large box; the 'Time' box. This shows a clock face and you should be able to see the second hand ticking around. Right underneath that there is a smaller box that shows the current time in six digits, two for the hour, two for the minutes, and two for the seconds, followed by either an 'AM' or a 'PM'. You can put cursor directly in this box and type over the existing time.

I usually don't fool with the seconds because it is very difficult to change the seconds while they are clicking off at the same time, but you can if you want to. Make sure that your time is what you want it to be, and then put your cursor over the AM or the PM, click once, and that will turn blue. Once it is blue you can use the up and down arrow to scroll between AM or PM so you have the AM and PM set correctly.

Underneath those larger boxes with the tabs you will see three buttons; 'Okay', 'Cancel' and 'Apply'. Use your mouse to put your cursor on top of the button marked 'Apply' and click once with your left mouse-button. The 'Apply' button should turn gray. The fact that it's gray means that the system has accepted your changes and if that's all that you need to change, you can now click the 'Okay' button and it will close that window.

If you suspect that your time zone is also wrong, click on the tab that says 'Time Zone'. It has a big map of the world and above it a small scroll box that has lists all the available time zones. Click the down arrow and simply scroll down and left-click once on the time zone you are in. Then go down and click the 'Apply' button so that it turns gray and then click on 'Okay'. This will close the box and if you look now in your right hand bottom corner you should see the correct time, including the AM or PM.

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