I've run into a really odd issue across our entire Windows domain environment, and I'm curious if anyone else is facing something similar.
### Environment + Symptoms
- Our setup includes an Active Directory domain with Windows Server 2025 DCs, recently upgraded from 2022.
- We're running Windows clients and RDS servers.
- Central DNS is handled via DC with public forwarders (1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8, 9.9.9.9).
- For some reason, all Windows machines are suddenly defaulting their locations to Seattle, Washington (UTC -08:00).
- We're seeing system prompts that say, 'A new timezone has been detected: Pacific Time (USA & Canada).'
- The automatic timezone detection is failing completely, and it's impacting apps that depend on location services. For instance, Google Maps can't determine an exact location.
### What I've Checked So Far
- **Geo-IP is correct:** Our public IP resolves correctly to Germany when checked through external services.
- **DNS is clean:** No internal overrides and all forwarders are standard public resolvers. I confirmed `nslookup` for location.microsoft.com resolves properly.
- **This isn't a network issue:** The same problem is reproducible on an iPhone using 5G, outside of our corporate network.
### Key Finding
When trying to access https://location.microsoft.com, I'm consistently receiving a security warning about an expired TLS certificate from Microsoft, which seems to suggest that the Microsoft Location endpoint itself is misconfigured or broken.
### Impact on Our Organization
This issue is causing all systems to default to Seattle, making timezone auto-detection useless and causing confusion for users. It could also lead to problems with apps that rely on accurate geolocation.
### Questions I'm Seeking Answers For
- Is anyone else experiencing this behavior?
- Is this a known issue with Microsoft Location Services?
- Could this be related to recent certificate rotations?
- Does anyone have any official statements or incident reports?
I would really appreciate any insights on this topic. It feels like a backend issue on Microsoft's end, but I'm surprised there's not more chatter about it yet. Thanks!
2 Answers
You're definitely not alone! I noticed the same issue with an expired certificate on the location service from my end too. Sounds like this might be entirely on Microsoft's side, especially since you're seeing the same problems on different networks.
Yeah, the first time I saw it, I thought it was a local issue until I tested outside of my network. It’s definitely something broken with their service.
At this stage, you might want to consider disabling the Windows Location Service in your environment. In enterprise setups, it's often better to manage locations manually using systems that you can control more tightly, like NTP or internal DNS settings.
Good tip! I’d like to set up a GPO to disable that. Do you have any best practices for manually setting locations?”},{
Right? It's strange how long it’s taking to get a fix. I thought it’d be sorted out by now given the impact—I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it.