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I have a full license of Windows 11 that I obtained from my school on my laptop while attending for my Bachelors of Cybersecurity.

Could this be the cause/reason for my Timezone settings automatically changing to a different timezone to that which I live in? (i.e. My organizations servers or something are based in that timezone and my computer, treated as an "organization computer" for having that license, had that timezone enforced during a Group Policy or other domain/network configuration update or something perhaps?)

Is this a possibility? Could there be another reason?

Can someone with more experience explain to me how the Windows GPS systems work to establish location and timezone settings? Why Windows might change the timezone settings automatically if they were manually set otherwise, even without physical relocation?

I was not using any kind of VPN, transparent at the router or on my endpoint (laptop, in this case) either through Windows settings or other VPN app or otherwise for that to be a possibility/concern. Just direct to ISP provided router.

GeoIP of the public-address triangulating to my physical locale (whatsmyip.com).

I would expect that whatever services Windows uses to geolocate would triangulate to my physical location as well. Why might it not?

How could I verify/test?

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  • What location do you get if you open the 'Maps' app (if it's installed)? Does the laptop actually have a GPS/GNSS feature (often part of a 3G/4G/LTE modem)?
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Jan 8 at 12:25

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Windows can set the timezone automatically according to the computer's GeoLocation. You can enable/disable it in settings => Date&Time => Set time zone automatically (see screenshot below). And if you computer is managed by an organization (=joined to a domain), then the domain admin may instate a policy enabling/disabling it, and the settings ui will indicate it - Notice in the screenshot, the setting is grayed-out and there's a note Some of these settings are managed by your organization - as it is in my screenshot below.

As for how Windows determines its GeoLocation, you can try to play around with this PowerShell code (source): Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Device; $Geo = New-Object System.Device.Location.GeoCoordinateWatcher; $Geo.Start(); $Geo.Position

Settings - Date&Time

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