Unable to Change Time Zone in Windows 10 – Resolved

A customer called me a little while ago with a unique problem. Everytime he tried changing the time on his Windows 10 computer to Eastern Standard Time it was always switching back to Pacific Standard Time. This was causing a big annoyance since he was located in the Eastern Standard Time zone. Windows 10 Time Zone Settings

Here are some of the troubleshooting things I tried and then what actually fixed the issue for this customer.

  1. I tried the basic things first. I tried changing the time zone in the Windows 10 settings app. No luck there.
  2. I tried changing the time zone in the Control Panel. That didn’t work either.
  3. I tried to synchronize the computer’s time zone/ time with Internet Time servers. I also tried to set the time zone manually . Neither of those worked.

Here is what actually worked for me. I’m not sure as to why this worked, but sometimes you need to let “good enough” alone.

I booted into Safe Mode. I opened the Windows 10 Settings App > Time & Language and set the time zone to Eastern Standard time.

I rebooted the computer and logged into Windows 10 normally. I checked the time. Everything was fine. I followed up with the customer a little while later, and he said the time on his computer hadn’t changed since. Bingo!

Please let me know in the comment section below if this helped you. Follow me on Twitter for more troubleshooting tips. This was posted by techspeeder.

4 thoughts on “Unable to Change Time Zone in Windows 10 – Resolved

  1. Rebecca Owens

    Thank you!!!! I have tried everything to change the time zone on my computer and nothing has worked. It always said I didn’t have permission to do so. I’m the admin on the computer. I’m assuming it had something to do with a security setting but I could not find it. I did exactly what you described and it worked like a charm!

    Reply
  2. Joe

    Wow this is the easiest way then. After I restarted the eastern time was 3 hours advanced and I manually set again and restarted. Then all is good now. I even switched back to set time to automatic and time zone to automatic. thank you my good man for sharing this fix!!!

    Reply

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