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Timezone is a critical settings on client and server systems. This setting is a "computer-wide" setting, not a per-user setting, so we will not be able to set a specific timezone for a specific user, on Windows systems.
This setting allows us to set the time according to the geographical location the computer is located at. We can change the time zone of a computer in Date and Time properties window which can be opened by running timedate.cpl (Control Panel applet) from Run window.
Set Time, Date, and Timezone using GUI
On modern Windows operating systems the process is very simple: Right-click the time field in the lower right corner and then click the Adjust date/time option, like in the following image:
In the Settings window, you can change the time, date, and timezones of each Windows Server. From this step the process to change date, time and timezone is quite self-explanatory.
Another way to achieve this task is to open the time and date settings window by clicking, on Windows Server systems, on the corresponding field in the Local Server section of the Server Manager control panel.
In this last case, this procedure will open the old management window through which you can set the time, date and time zone for the system.
Set time, date, and time zone using Command Prompt
Now that we have seen how to get and set time, date and time zone by using Windows GUI, it could be useful to know even how to get these info using Command Prompt commands. By typing the following command will open the time and date setting window, even in a Server Core installation:
control timedate.cpl
While, to every Windows system, to display the current date and time we could use the following commands:
Date /t Time /t
To set time and date, you can use the corresponding time and date commands at the command line.
Take note that the default output from DATE /T is in the United States is "1/23/1997" but this is dependent on the country/locale (and obviously in which language you have installed Windows on your system.
To set the time we will use a simple time HH:MM command.
For both date and time commands there are only two errorlevels, 0 (zero) if the command has been executed successfully and 1 (one) if the user has no administrative privileges to change these parameters.
At this point we will go back to our timezone parameter. This info is very critical on some production systems and this info should be modified only by administrative users and only after reviewing all the implications (databases, applications, servers, timestamps, etc.).
To easily manage this info (timezone) on Windows systems, from Windows Server 2012 and above, have been added the Timezone Utility (tzutil) tool that allows us to display and set a time zone through the Windows command line.
To use it, we first open the command line with administrator privileges and make sure we are in the System32 folder.
To display the current Windows Server Time Zone configured on the system, we type the following command:
tzutil /g
To display all available time zones, we could type the following command:
tzutil /l
The following list includes all timezone available using tzutil.exe program. On the left column you will see the
(UTC-12:00) International Date Line West Dateline Standard Time (UTC-11:00) Co-ordinated Universal Time-11 UTC-11 (UTC-10:00) Aleutian Islands Aleutian Standard Time (UTC-10:00) Hawaii Hawaiian Standard Time (UTC-09:30) Marquesas Islands Marquesas Standard Time (UTC-09:00) Alaska Alaskan Standard Time (UTC-09:00) Co-ordinated Universal Time-09 UTC-09 (UTC-08:00) Baja California Pacific Standard Time (Mexico) (UTC-08:00) Co-ordinated Universal Time-08 UTC-08 (UTC-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) Pacific Standard Time (UTC-07:00) Arizona US Mountain Standard Time (UTC-07:00) Chihuahua, La Paz, Mazatlan Mountain Standard Time (Mexico) (UTC-07:00) Mountain Time (US & Canada) Mountain Standard Time (UTC-06:00) Central America Central America Standard Time (UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) Central Standard Time (UTC-06:00) Easter Island Easter Island Standard Time (UTC-06:00) Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey Central Standard Time (Mexico) (UTC-06:00) Saskatchewan Canada Central Standard Time (UTC-05:00) Bogota, Lima, Quito, Rio Branco SA Pacific Standard Time (UTC-05:00) Chetumal Eastern Standard Time (Mexico) (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) Eastern Standard Time (UTC-05:00) Haiti Haiti Standard Time (UTC-05:00) Havana Cuba Standard Time (UTC-05:00) Indiana (East) US Eastern Standard Time (UTC-05:00) Turks and Caicos Turks And Caicos Standard Time (UTC-04:00) Asuncion Paraguay Standard Time (UTC-04:00) Atlantic Time (Canada) Atlantic Standard Time (UTC-04:00) Caracas Venezuela Standard Time (UTC-04:00) Cuiaba Central Brazilian Standard Time (UTC-04:00) Georgetown, La Paz, Manaus, San Juan SA Western Standard Time (UTC-04:00) Santiago Pacific SA Standard Time (UTC-03:30) Newfoundland Newfoundland Standard Time (UTC-03:00) Araguaina Tocantins Standard Time (UTC-03:00) Brasilia E. South America Standard Time (UTC-03:00) Cayenne, Fortaleza SA Eastern Standard Time (UTC-03:00) City of Buenos Aires Argentina Standard Time (UTC-03:00) Greenland Greenland Standard Time (UTC-03:00) Montevideo Montevideo Standard Time (UTC-03:00) Punta Arenas Magallanes Standard Time (UTC-03:00) Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Pierre Standard Time (UTC-03:00) Salvador Bahia Standard Time (UTC-02:00) Co-ordinated Universal Time-02 UTC-02 (UTC-01:00) Azores Azores Standard Time (UTC-01:00) Cabo Verde Is. Cape Verde Standard Time (UTC) Co-ordinated Universal Time UTC (UTC+00:00) Casablanca Morocco Standard Time (UTC+00:00) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London GMT Standard Time (UTC+00:00) Monrovia, Reykjavik Greenwich Standard Time (UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna W. Europe Standard Time (UTC+01:00) Belgrade, Bratislava, Budapest, Ljubljana, Prague Central Europe Standard Time (UTC+01:00) Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris Romance Standard Time (UTC+01:00) Sao Tome Sao Tome Standard Time (UTC+01:00) Sarajevo, Skopje, Warsaw, Zagreb Central European Standard Time (UTC+01:00) West Central Africa W. Central Africa Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Amman Jordan Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Athens, Bucharest GTB Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Beirut Middle East Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Cairo Egypt Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Chisinau E. Europe Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Damascus Syria Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Gaza, Hebron West Bank Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Harare, Pretoria South Africa Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Helsinki, Kyiv, Riga, Sofia, Tallinn, Vilnius FLE Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Jerusalem Israel Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Kaliningrad Kaliningrad Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Khartoum Sudan Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Tripoli Libya Standard Time (UTC+02:00) Windhoek Namibia Standard Time (UTC+03:00) Baghdad Arabic Standard Time (UTC+03:00) Istanbul Turkey Standard Time (UTC+03:00) Kuwait, Riyadh Arab Standard Time (UTC+03:00) Minsk Belarus Standard Time (UTC+03:00) Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd Russian Standard Time (UTC+03:00) Nairobi E. Africa Standard Time (UTC+03:30) Tehran Iran Standard Time (UTC+04:00) Abu Dhabi, Muscat Arabian Standard Time (UTC+04:00) Astrakhan, Ulyanovsk Astrakhan Standard Time (UTC+04:00) Baku Azerbaijan Standard Time (UTC+04:00) Izhevsk, Samara Russia Time Zone 3 (UTC+04:00) Port Louis Mauritius Standard Time (UTC+04:00) Saratov Saratov Standard Time (UTC+04:00) Tbilisi Georgian Standard Time (UTC+04:00) Yerevan Caucasus Standard Time (UTC+04:30) Kabul Afghanistan Standard Time (UTC+05:00) Ashgabat, Tashkent West Asia Standard Time (UTC+05:00) Ekaterinburg Ekaterinburg Standard Time (UTC+05:00) Islamabad, Karachi Pakistan Standard Time (UTC+05:30) Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi India Standard Time (UTC+05:30) Sri Jayawardenepura Sri Lanka Standard Time (UTC+05:45) Kathmandu Nepal Standard Time (UTC+06:00) Astana Central Asia Standard Time (UTC+06:00) Dhaka Bangladesh Standard Time (UTC+06:00) Omsk Omsk Standard Time (UTC+06:30) Yangon (Rangoon) Myanmar Standard Time (UTC+07:00) Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta SE Asia Standard Time (UTC+07:00) Barnaul, Gorno-Altaysk Altai Standard Time (UTC+07:00) Hovd W. Mongolia Standard Time (UTC+07:00) Krasnoyarsk North Asia Standard Time (UTC+07:00) Novosibirsk N. Central Asia Standard Time (UTC+07:00) Tomsk Tomsk Standard Time (UTC+08:00) Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong SAR, Urumqi China Standard Time (UTC+08:00) Irkutsk North Asia East Standard Time (UTC+08:00) Kuala Lumpur, Singapore Singapore Standard Time (UTC+08:00) Perth W. Australia Standard Time (UTC+08:00) Taipei Taipei Standard Time (UTC+08:00) Ulaanbaatar Ulaanbaatar Standard Time (UTC+08:45) Eucla Aus Central W. Standard Time (UTC+09:00) Chita Transbaikal Standard Time (UTC+09:00) Osaka, Sapporo, Tokyo Tokyo Standard Time (UTC+09:00) Pyongyang North Korea Standard Time (UTC+09:00) Seoul Korea Standard Time (UTC+09:00) Yakutsk Yakutsk Standard Time (UTC+09:30) Adelaide Cen. Australia Standard Time (UTC+09:30) Darwin AUS Central Standard Time (UTC+10:00) Brisbane E. Australia Standard Time (UTC+10:00) Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney AUS Eastern Standard Time (UTC+10:00) Guam, Port Moresby West Pacific Standard Time (UTC+10:00) Hobart Tasmania Standard Time (UTC+10:00) Vladivostok Vladivostok Standard Time (UTC+10:30) Lord Howe Island Lord Howe Standard Time (UTC+11:00) Bougainville Island Bougainville Standard Time (UTC+11:00) Chokurdakh Russia Time Zone 10 (UTC+11:00) Magadan Magadan Standard Time (UTC+11:00) Norfolk Island Norfolk Standard Time (UTC+11:00) Sakhalin Sakhalin Standard Time (UTC+11:00) Solomon Is., New Caledonia Central Pacific Standard Time (UTC+12:00) Anadyr, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Russia Time Zone 11 (UTC+12:00) Auckland, Wellington New Zealand Standard Time (UTC+12:00) Co-ordinated Universal Time+12 UTC+12 (UTC+12:00) Fiji Fiji Standard Time (UTC+12:45) Chatham Islands Chatham Islands Standard Time (UTC+13:00) Co-ordinated Universal Time+13 UTC+13 (UTC+13:00) Nuku'alofa Tonga Standard Time (UTC+13:00) Samoa Samoa Standard Time (UTC+14:00) Kiritimati Island Line Islands Standard Time
If you want to quickly find all available time zones (for example, with a UTC -6 offset), run the command:
tzutil /l | find /I "utc-06"
To change the current time zone in Windows Server and Windows Clients, type the following command, between the doubles, enter the timezone code (under each UTC definition) as it appears in the list of the previous command. For example, for the Greek time zone type:
tzutil /s "GTB Standard Time"
To confirm that the time zone has changed, you can see the corresponding registry entry by using the following command from within the same command-line window.
reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation
NOTE: take note that to use the tzutil.exe program you will need to have administrative privileges.
To disable Daylight Saving Time for a specific timezone, you must specify a time zone identifier with the suffix _dstoff, for example:
tzutil /s “Central European Standard Time_dstoff”
After executing this command, you will change the current time zone of the computer and disable the seasonal clock change.
Set time, date and time zone with Powershell
By using Powershell, on all modern Windows OSes, we can view the current date and time, type the following command:
Get-Date
To set the time and date through Powershell the process is very easy. Use the following command as an example by changing the date and time values.
Set-Date -Date "06/06/2017 14:45"
Alternatively, you can simply type the Set-Date command and promptly you will be prompted to enter the server’s date and time:
To view the current time zone through Powershell, type the following simple command:
[TimeZoneInfo]::Local Or... Get-TimeZone
Before changing the time zone, you will need to know the right name (Timezone ID). Type the following command to see all available time zones in Windows Server and Windows Clients:
[System.TimeZoneInfo]::GetSystemTimeZones() Or... Get-TimeZone -ListAvailable
To change the time zone, use the following command along with the corresponding time zone of your server or client:
Set-TimeZone -Name "GTB Standard Time"
Allow or Prevent Users from Changing the Time Zone
By default, a user doesn’t need the administrator permissions to change the time zone (unlike changing date/time). This behavior can be changed using Local Security Settings console (secpol.msc).
Go to Security Settings -> Local Policy -> User Rights Assignment. The policy is called Change the time zone. As you can see, time zone can be changed by the system itself, administrators and all users. To prevent users from changing the time zone, remove Users group from the list of accounts in this policy.
Change the TimeZone in Windows XP from Command Prompt
A quick way to change timezone on an old Windows XP system is the following command executed in a Command Prompt:
RunDLL32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL timedate.cpl,,/Z "Central Standard Time"
In Windows the information about the value of the current time zone is stored in the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation.
For example, in our case you can see that Romance Daylight Time is currently used. The same information can be obtained with the following query:
reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation
The list of available time zones in Windows XP / Windows Server 2003 is stored in the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones.
To change the current time zone to Central America Standard Time (GMT-06:00 – Central America), use the command:
RunDLL32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL timedate.cpl,,/Z Central America Standard Time
Or:
Control.exe TIMEDATE.CPL,,/Z Central America Standard Time
Make sure that the time zone has been changed:
reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation
Script to Change the TimeZone Using GPO
Another approach to change the time zone on multiple systems using a GPO and a script is the following PowerShell script that allows to change the time zone on any computer, assuming that Windows XP / Windows Server 2003 computers still exist in your network).
This script can be assigned using group policies to all domain computers or a certain organizational units (OU). The script determines the OS version, and if it is Windows Vista or later, it uses tzutil.exe to change the time zone. The $timeZone variable will contain the time zone ID we want to assign to all system under the GPO.
In the other case the time zone is changed using RunDLL32.exe (Windows XP).
$timeZone = "Central Europe Daylight Time"
$WinOSVerReg = Get-Item "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion"
$WinOSVer = $WinOSVerReg.GetValue("CurrentVersion")
if ($WinOSVer -GE 6){
tzutil.exe /s $timeZone
} Else {
$params = "/c Start `"Change timeZone`" /MIN %WINDIR%\System32\Control.exe TIMEDATE.CPL,,/Z "
$params += $timeZone
$proc = [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start( "CMD.exe", $params )
}
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