Default global regional setting

Question

How to change default global regional setting, which in one time setup can apply occure to all users inside windows server, including running service account, mssqlserver account, defsultaccount public, guest etc, i mean all users.
Thanks

Answer 1

Hi,

Regional settings are applied per user. If you would like to apply the regional setting to all users, you can try below settings.

1. Control Panel > Clock, Language, and Region > Region > Administrative > Copy settings > Copy your current settings to
   
2. Use registry: HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International > Copy all the settings under this key to all other User Profiles' same locations
   
3. You can also use Domain Group Policy to apply the settings for all users in the domain. For your reference:
   https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-performance-team/how-to-change-regional-settings-for-all-users-on-a-computer/ba-p/375086
   https://dennisspan.com/configuring-regional-settings-and-windows-locales-with-group-policy/

Thanks,
Eleven

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Answer 2

The previous answer works for current user and new users, but not for other existing users.
To apply to existing users it is necessary to load their ntuser.dat file into registry and update those same international keys.
control panel\international
control panel\desktop\languageConfiguration
Control Panel\Desktop\MuiCached
keyboard layout\preload

For the welcome screen these registry locations seems to be required also
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Nls\Language
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Nls\Locale
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\MUI\Settings

(new users really get some of their settings from the welcome screen settings. At least that is how it seems in practice)

Also if you are copying these from an account that has just been set the registry key can be found here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\LanguageConfigurationPending

So in Win11 copying settings to new users and welcome screen can be done with the simple powershell command:
Copy-UserInternationalSettingsToSystem -WelcomeScreen $True -NewUser $True

But that command will not update previously set up users (in my experience) so the same steps will have to be done if a systemwide change of the international settings is wanted or required.