Event banner
Event details
We have experienced issues with the new ‘Time & language / Date & time’ Settings panel in Windows 11 – can you help?
First – if ‘Location Services’ and ‘Let apps access your location’ under ‘Privacy & Security’ are DISABLED, but the Windows service ‘Auto Time Zone Updater’ startup type is set to Automatic (set by the ‘Set the time zone automatically’ setting), then in the Settings panel, both ‘Time zone’ AND ‘Set the time zone automatically’ are ‘greyed out’. The outcome is that users are unable to change their time zone, and unable to ‘disable’ ‘Set the time zone automatically’ to allow them to do so. For example: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/unable-to-change-timezone-settings-windows-11/95d42f77-6516-4115-9401-055b3d5afcec?page=2
Second – if a user on an Active Directory domain-joined device opens the ‘Date & time’ control panel while disconnected from the Active Directory domain (e.g. remote worker, not currently connected via VPN), the ‘Set the time automatically’ control is shown as available, and in the ‘Off’ state. The user will have the ability to toggle this ‘On’, but when they do so the ‘Type’ setting in the registry is updated to ‘NTP’ (from the default for domain-joined devices of ‘NT5DS’). When the user accesses the domain again the incorrect ‘NTP’ setting remains (it is not reset back to ‘NT5DS’) which results in the device never performing domain time synchronization again. On a domain joined device the ‘NT5DS’ setting should be interpreted as ‘On’, and should also be what is configured when the control is set to ‘On’ https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/time-sync-issues-on-windows-10-domain-joined/03738fe4-a455-477e-8275-b100902418b7 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/windows-time-service/windows-time-service-tools-and-settings#parameters
Third – if system administrators seek to mitigate against these issues via the ‘Configure Windows NTP Client’ Group Policy setting (e.g. to force the Type setting to ‘NT5DS’, or ‘AllSync’ with a fallback time server e.g. ‘time.windows.com,0xA’), and a user on the Active Directory domain-joined device opens the ‘Date & time’ control panel while disconnected from the Active Directory (as above), the user still appears to be able to change the ‘Set the time automatically’ setting even though it is ineffective, (the ‘Type’ registry value is updated in the usual area, but the Windows Time service ignores it and acts according to the applied Group Policy), giving the end-user an false impression of control.
- For your first scenario - I believe the behavior you are seeing is expected. Reference this article, particularly the note that location services must be On or it will override the manual editing of the entry. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/shell-experience/cannot-set-timezone-automatically
Sean McLarenAre you saying that it's 'expected' that a user is unable to set their timezone, and that there's no indication of how they can do so? If the user has disabled Location Services (which is in an entirely different panel) but the 'auto time zone update' service is enabled (but not functional because Location Services is disabled) then all functionality to set the time zone manually is disabled. There is no information in the UI that re-enabling Location Services will allow the time zone to be set. This is not at all user friendly, and especially so when you consider that the 'old' date & time control panel is still able to set time zone in this situation (if the user can find it).
P.S. Your 'fix' involves forcing Location Services on for every user. Just FYI not everyone likes being spied on.
Also this came up recently when a C-suite user travelled and rang up the IT department furious because he couldn't change the time zone himself, and the screen said 'Some of the settings are managed by your organisation.' Of course we had done no such thing, we just had to tell them that the Windows 11 settings app is broken.
- Thank you for the feedback on the usability of the UI and settings and I will take this feedback to the appropriate teams. We are always looking for ways to improve the user experience and value the feedback. If you are seeing a message that says this setting is managed by your organization that means a policy is set on the machine, which can happen from a GPO, registry change, MDM management solution, etc. so it's difficult for me to guess that exact state your device is in or how the settings were applied. If you believe you've hit an issue or a bug, I'd encourage you to contact Microsoft Support, as they can help debug and troubleshoot the behavior you are seeing, and they can also file a bug if they encounter one or a design change if that is appropriate. They really are the best resource to get to the root of an issue and take the best action. The reason you are seeing the 2 settings interact is that there is no way to automatically detect time zone without location, so the 2 settings are tied together.
