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Date and Time Format Not Matching Server

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Eamonn O'Brien

Hi All,

Great software.

Our PDQ Inventory installation is 'stuck' on the wrong date format (US vs. EU). Changing every location setting on the server hasn't helped and I've crawled the registry and every .config file I can find to no avail. It's still stuck exporting reports in the wrong format.

Very frustrating!

Help!

Eamonn

1

Comments

11 comments
Date Votes
  • Avatar
    Eamonn O'Brien

    Would really appreciate your help with this guys it's getting critical. 

    1
  • Avatar
    lnichols

    Eamonn,

    I just tested this on our PDQ server running Server 2016. I changed the date format through settings, stopped the PDQ Deploy service, restarted the PDQ Inventory service, and then restarted the PDQ Deploy service. You probably just need to restart those services after a date format change before it re-reads the system's date settings.

    2
  • Avatar
    Eamonn O'Brien

    Hi Luke,

    Thanks for the prompt response. I've actually tried this a number of times. The reports will visually show that the date format has changed when you pull them up on screen but once you execute a CSV report... it exports the reports both with the DateTime in the filename as US format and within the body of the reports themselves inside in the CSV files. 

    Computer Name Computer Manufacturer Computer Model Computer Current User Computer Current User First Name Computer Current User Last Name Computer AD Created Computer AD Last Logon
    WorkStation121452 Dell Inc. OptiPlex 3040 CNT1\CodePlex 3/29/2017 1:46:58 PM 11/14/2019 3:15:48 AM
    1
  • Avatar
    lnichols

    Eamonn,

    I tested pulling a CSV report and I did not get the same result as you. Here is a snippet of my reports before and after changing the time. As you can see, I have several date fields in the report and their formats changed:

    Can you try restarting the services in the same way that I described? Stop Deploy, restart Inventory, then start Deploy?

    2
  • Avatar
    Eamonn O'Brien

    Ah, ok, so you have to restart both Deploy and Inventory? Thanks for coming back here Luke! 

    1
  • Avatar
    Eamonn O'Brien

    Ok, I've restarted both. Same issue. Date and times are still in the US format. 

    1
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    lnichols

    Ok, weird. What version of PDQ are you running and what OS are you running on the PDQ server?

    Also, can you please post a screenshot of your time format settings?

    1
  • Avatar
    Eamonn O'Brien

    Hi,


    So the server is running Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard 64-bit (6.3, Build 9600) (9600.winblue_ltsb.190831-0600) and it's PDQ Inventory Version 18.1.38.0. The strange thing is that data being shown on screen is in the correct EU format, it's only the CSV export that shows both the time and filename in the incorrect format. Requesting a timestamp at the cmd shows in the correct US format in MS-DOS. 

    This is really, really messing up a database that PDQ feeds into as it's already scrambled a good few date/time fields as they've accepted the data where the day value appearing in the month column was <13. 

    1
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    lnichols

    That is weird that it displays correctly in PDQ but then the export is mangled. Is this an auto report or are you running it manually? If it's an auto report it might need to be re-created, maybe it only reads the date info when it is first created.

    1
  • Avatar
    Eamonn O'Brien
    Hi,
     
    The solution here is that while the local user account generates regular reports and information on screen, the background account triggers reports to be dumped onto the server on a scheduler. If the user account running the PDQ on screen is being run with EU timestamp, but the background PDQ account is being run with US timestamp, the reports will be triggered by the US timestamp.
     
    Changing the PDQ background account fixed the issue. 
     
    Oh boy the nights I've wasted on this!
     
    Eamonn
    3
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    pcamis

    Eamonn O'Brien - you're a genius!  Thanks very much for posting this info.  Saved me more time than I'd already spent trying to resolve this same issue.

    1