Fix Windows Server unable to change the time zone

I will recommend you How to fix the problem that Windows Server cannot change the time zone

We encountered an error while changing the time zone on our Windows server, which said that we did not have permission to proceed. If an administrator has not given standard users the privilege to change the time zone, then you will not be able to do so. However, in some scenarios, even the account with administrative privileges cannot change the time zone. In this post, we discussed what to do when Windows Server is unable to change the time zone.

How to fix the problem that Windows Server cannot change the time zone

Windows Server Time Zone You Do Not Have Permission

In most of the cases, you will get the You Do Not Have Permission message if the administrator has prohibited you from making changes to the date and time on your system. Even if you log in with the administrator account, that particular task will not run with administrator access. We have discussed this issue in detail along with all the possible solutions.

Windows Server Cannot Change Time Zone Fix

If Windows Server is unable to change the time zone and you see the error message Cannot continue, you do not have permission to perform this task, then follow the solutions mentioned below.

Try again with an account with administrator access
Give the user the privilege to change the time zone
Run timedate.cpl as administrator
Change the time using tzutil command
Use the Set-TimeZone command

Let's talk about them in detail.

1] Try again with administrator access account

As mentioned above, your administrator may restrict your account from changing the time zone, so we recommend you try again to do the same with an account that has administrator privileges. It is not certain that this will work as this error message appears sometimes even with an administrator account. In that case, you can move on to the next solution.

2] Give the user the privilege to change the time zone

If you are able to change the time zone using the administrator account, then you are lucky because you are not facing any problem, it is just that your organization does not allow users to change the standard time zone. However, if you are a server administrator and want to allow a standard user to alter the time zone, then you can follow the steps mentioned below.

Open the Local Security Policy on the server by searching for it in the Start menu.
Now, navigate to Security Settings > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment.
Scroll down and find the Change Time Zone policy.
Double-click on it to open it and then click on Add Users or Groups.
Click on Object Types, check Groups under Object Types and then click OK.
Then, inside the Enter the object names to select field, type the word Users and click OK on the remaining boxes until they disappear.
Click on Apply > OK.

After the above modification, you can close the window and then restart your machine. Once done, restart it, and try again. If it still didn't work, then

3] Run timedate.cpl as administrator

When we tried to change the time zone from the Control Panel, we encountered the error in question. So, ideally, we went to Settings, but even then we received an error that prevented us from making the changes. What happens here is that even though the account has administrator privileges, the option to change the date and time does not open as administrator. So, you need to press Win + S, type “timedate.cpl”, right-click on the entry and select Run as administrator, alternatively, click on the Run as administrator option which is on the right section. Click Yes when the UAC prompt appears and then change the time zone. With any luck, this will work for you.

4] Change time using tzutil command

The tzutil command in Windows is a utility used to manage and configure the system time zone. It stands for “Time Zone Utility” and allows users to display, configure and list time zones via command line. If you are unable to change the time zone using the above-mentioned method, try this alternative. To do so, open Command Prompt as administrator.

Now run the command below to check all the time zones available to you.

tzutil /l

Once you have the list of time zones, you can note down the name of the time zone you want to select and then run the following command.

tzutil /s "Indian Standard Time"

You should replace "Indian Standard Time" with the correct time zone ID as per your preference.

5] Use Set-TimeZone Command

Alternatively, you can use the Set-TimeZone command in PowerShell to set a time zone. To do so, open PowerShell as an administrator and then run the following command.

Get-TimeZone -ListAvaia list of all available time zones. However, if you want to narrow down your search, you can use the pipe (|) to add the filter. So, the command would look like this: Get-TimeZone -ListAvailable | where StandardName -like "*Ind*", you can replace "Ind" with the name of your country.

Then run the following command to set the time zone.

Set-TimeZone -Name "ID"

Replace “ID”, with the ID of your time zone, so in my case, the command will be Set-TimeZone -Name "Indian Standard Time"

How to Fix Windows Server unable to change the time zone