Most of the time Windows users are able to change the date, and time, especially in a single-user scenario where it has administrative privileges. That said if you have a case where you are an Administrator, and you don’t want anyone to change the date and time, you can easily prevent users from changing the date and time in Windows 11/10. This scenario is very common in a company where administrators need to make sure that all the PCs are in sync for applications to work. This also makes sure security is at par. One way is to create only a standard user account, but if you have multiple admins, you can prevent all of them from changing the date and time in Windows 11/10, except for yourself.
If you want to lock system time and date, you can prevent Users from changing the Date and Time in Windows 11/10, using Registry or Group Policy. You can also choose to disable it for one particular user. Before we go ahead, make sure you create a system restore point – which will be helpful if anything goes wrong.
Prevent Users from changing the Date and Time
There are two methods to do this. One is where you change registry keys, and the second is group admin policy. You will need to have Pro, Education and Enterprise edition for group policy method.
1: Prevent Users from changing Date & Time using Registry Editor
Open run prompt (Windows Key + R ), and then type regedit and hit Enter to open Registry Editor.
Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\
Check if you have Control Panel\International. If not, right-click on Microsoft and then select New > Key. Name this key as Control Panel. Then again right-click on Control Panel, and then create another Key and name it as International.
Now right-click on International then select New > DWORD (32-bit) value.
Name this newly created DWORD as PreventUserOverrides then double-click on it and give it a value of 1. The options are:
- 0 = Enable (Allow users to change the date and time)
- 1 = Disable (Prevent users from changing the date and time)
Similarly, follow the same procedure to inside the following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Control Panel\International
Once finished, close everything and reboot your PC to save changes.
2: Prevent users from changing Date & Time using Group Policy Editor
Note: Local Group Policy Editor isn’t available in Windows 10 Home edition users, so this method is only for Pro, Education and Enterprise edition users.
Open run prompt (Windows Key + R ), then type gpedit.msc and hit Enter.
Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Locale Services.
Double-click on Disallow user override of locale settings policy.
To Enable Changing Date and Time Formats for All Users: Select Not Configured or Disabled.
To Disable Changing Date and Time Formats for All Users: Select Enabled.
Apply, and then click on OK and exit. Restart your system.
This policy change will make sure to prevent the user from customizing their locale by changing their user overrides. In case there are any user-specific settings, it will override them. You will need to reset it from here first, and then the local policy will change.
Now here is one thing you should know. When it is enabled aka Prevent mode, the local users can still choose alternate locales installed on the system unless prevented by other policies. However, they will be unable to customize those choices.
The drawback of this system is that it will be applied for all. If you want to do it for one single user, we need to set this policy on a per-user basis, make sure that the pre-computer policy is set to Not Configured.
3: Prevent particular user from changing Date & Time using Group Policy Editor
To do this, we will have to load the group policy object editor from the Microsoft Management Console.
Open mmc.exe from the run prompt. This will launch the MMC console.
Click File > Add/remove snapin > Add Group Policy Object Editor and click the Add button
In the dialog which appears, click “Browse”.
Click the “Users” tab and select a user.
Now follow the same path but under User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Locale Services.
Double-click on Disallow user override of locale settings policy.
To Enable Changing Date and Time Formats for All Users: Select Not Configured or Disabled.
To Disable Changing Date and Time Formats for All Users: Select Enabled.
The last method is the most effective method as you can target one particular user instead of one particular admin. As users grow up, some are perfect to be admin while others are still learning. This is why you need to disable them on a per-user basis, instead of changing them for all the users on the PC.
Hope this helps!
