Allow or Prevent Users to Change Time Zone in Windows 10

How to Allow or Prevent Users or Groups to Change the Time Zone in Windows 10

Windows 10 supports setting a time zone for the PC clock. The time zone is a region of the globe that observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries of countries and their subdivisions because it is convenient for commercial areas close to them to follow the same time. By default, member accounts in the Administrators and Users groups can configure the time zone in Windows 10, but you can change this.

You may allow or prevent certain users or a group from being able to change the time zone on a Windows 10 device. Here is how it can be done.

There is a special security policy that determines which users can adjust the time zone that is used by the device for displaying the local time, which includes the device's system time plus the time zone offset.

If you are running Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education edition, you can use the Local Security Policy app to change the policy. All editions of Windows 10, including Windows 10 Home, can use an alternative solution mentioned below.

To Allow Users or Groups to Change Time Zone Windows 10,

1. Press Win + R keys together on your keyboard and type:

   secpol.msc

   Press Enter.

2. Local Security Policy will open. Go to User Local Policies -> User Rights Assignment.
3. On the right, double-click the option Change the time zone.
4. In the next dialog, click Add User or Group.
5. Click on the Advanced button.
6. Now, click on the Object Types button.
7. Ensure that you have the Users and Groups items checked and click on the OK button.
8. Click on the Find now button.
9. From the list, select the user account or group to allow them to change the time zone. You can select more than one entry at once by holding the Shift or Ctrl keys and clicking on the items the list.
10. Click on the OK button to add the selected items to the Object names box.
11. Click on the OK button to add the selected items to the policy list.

You are done.

To Prevent Users or Groups from Changing the Time Zone Windows 10,

1. Press Win + R keys together on your keyboard and type:

   secpol.msc

   Press Enter.

2. Local Security Policy will open. Go to User Local Policies -> User Rights Assignment.
3. On the right, double-click the option Change the time zone.
4. Select an entry, use the Remove button in the policy dialog.

If your Windows edition doesn't include the secpol.msc tool, here is an alternative solution.

If your Windows edition doesn't include the secpol.msc tool, you can use the ntrights.exe tool from Windows 2003 Resource Kit. Many resource kit tools released for previous Windows versions will run successfully on Windows 10. Ntrights.exe is one of them.

The ntrights tool

The ntrights tool allows you to edit user account privileges from the command prompt. It is a console tool with the following syntax.

• Grant a right: ntrights +r Right -u UserOrGroup [-m \\Computer] [-e Entry]
• Revoke a right: ntrights -r Right -u UserOrGroup [-m \\Computer] [-e Entry]

The tool supports plenty of privileges which can be assigned to or revoked from a user account or group. Privileges are case sensitive. To learn more about the supported privileges, type ntrights /?.

To add ntrights.exe to Windows 10, read this post: What is ntrights app and how you can use it. You can place the ntrights.exe file to the C:\Windows\System32 folder to quickly call it.

Revoke Create Pagefile Right with ntrights

1. Open an elevated command prompt.
2. Type the following command to grant the 'Change the time zone' privilege:

   ntrights -u SomeUserName +r SeTimeZonePrivilege

   Substitute the SomeUserName portion with the actual user name or group name. The specified user will be able to change the time zone in Windows 10.

3. To undo the change and deny the user to change the time zone, execute

   ntrights -u SomeUserName -r SeTimeZonePrivilege

That's it.

Related articles.

• How to Set Time Zone in Windows 10
• Add Clocks for Additional Time Zones in Windows 10
• Sync Time With Internet Server Manually in Windows 10
• Create Date and Time Shortcut in Windows 10

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