Location Issue on my laptop with Windows 11

I have my date/time settings to automatic is turned off. If I turn it on and sync, it tries to put me in the Eastern time zone, when in fact I am in the Central time zone.

Also the website Geolocalización por IP: descubre tu posición en tiempo real (whereiam.net), it shows this for my IP:

Latitude: 32.96369
Longitude: -96.74672

IP: <removed>
City: Richardson
Postal code: 75080
Service provider: null
Company: AT&T Corp.

That is correct for the IP info, but if I go to the "where am I right now tab" (Where I am right now - whereiam.net), it shows this:

My current location:

Street: Monroe Street, Boydton, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, 23917, United States

Latitude and longitudeLatitude: 36.6674 °
Longitude: -78.39 °

DMS Coordinates

Latitude: 36 40 2 N
Longitude: 78 23 24 W

I tried another one of those sites (MY IP LOCATION => Where am I based on my IP? (where-am-i.co)), and it shows similar information. For IP location:

For "My location" (MY LOCATION - Real-time locator (where-am-i.co))

Something is definitely up with Microsoft and this whole Boydton thing. Three people having Boydton as their geo-location (not IP location info) when they are no where no? Yea, that's a bug. Fix it Microsoft.

Yea, it is ridiculous. I've seen others post their location is also showing as Boydton, VA. Not a coincidence.

Also, I have IPv6 turned off and it still does this.

I have this same issue and it's super annoying. Edge, and the Maps app, in Windows 11, locates me in Boydton , VA, even though I'm in the Dallas, TX area. Chrome, however, < does NOT have this issue, on the same system. Utterly ridiculous.

< SNIP >

Rob

DB-D-M,

Okay, making my original post was proven wrong for at least your specific case, so I did some more research including both Windows 11 and general issues going back to at least Windows 10 and there are many different potential reasons for flaky results.

That got me interested in my own settings and as I suspected, I'd turned Off the 'Allow apps to access your location' in the Settings app, Privacy section titled Location long ago, most likely due to privacy concerns.  So, my own settings were actually controlled by either a default general setting for a nearby city or other possibly other more specific settings in various apps.

For some reason my own Microsoft Maps app was initially pointing at a location north of Toronto, which since I'd actually traveled there with this Surface Go tablet device a few years back, might actually have been near an Airbnb I stayed in, as it's also believable that I may have decided to turn location on during that trip.  This fits with some others' problems I read where old data seems to get stuck or possibly corrupts the result, possibly even being collected from data stored in your Microsoft account, though I have no way of knowing the source where this data was acquired.  That's why one of the solutions offered is typically to reset the history and mapping data related to both the Maps app and possibly others like Edge.

As soon as I turned On the Allow apps to access your location though, reopening the Maps app I'd previously closed went to, wait for it, the same Boydton, VA as yours and others you mentioned.

At this point, I decided to try the most potentially viable solution I'd read where a few had seen issues relating to time.  Looking in Windows Settings, Time & Language, I noticed though everything was set to operate automatically, and the Time zone was correct, the last successful synchronization had been over 3 hours previous.  I clicked the 'Sync now' button which brought the time current, then switched to the already open Maps app and clicked the Show my location dot in the middle of the control bar.  This instantly moved to my accurate location supposedly within 348 ft., which in fact was on the street just 2 houses away.

Now of course I should have tried that Show my location dot in the Maps app control bar before changing the time, but since the location had changed to Boydton. VA when I restarted the app, I assume that would have remained the same as it does now when I press it again.  So at least in my case, that particular Boydton, VA symptom was apparently resolved by resyncing the time manually.

My bet is that everyone here may have different issues as did those in the other threads I read through, so since this only discusses some of those, I'll also provide the link to the best thread I read in Microsoft's TechCommunity forums that provided most of what I've mentioned here in case it might aid someone else.  I'll also leave my own previous posts, since as I stated, the IP address data is what Microsoft actually uses, it still may aid someone who actually has that specific problem.

Geolocation wrong (really wrong) in Edge but correct in Chrome - Microsoft Community Hub

Rob

Also, I checked my Microsoft Activity, and it's logging my successful attempts using IPv4.

Yea, it is ridiculous. I've seen others post their location is also showing as Boydton, VA. Not a coincidence.

Also, I have IPv6 turned off and it still does this.

I have this same issue and it's super annoying. Edge, and the Maps app, in Windows 11, locates me in Boydton , VA, even though I'm in the Dallas, TX area. Chrome, however, does NOT have this issue, on the same system. Utterly ridiculous.

Chrome browser by Google has always used their own location services that include the Wi-Fi and other location data that they've spent decades developing, which aren't available to Microsoft who instead typically use the less precise and often less accurate IP addressing scheme.

There's nothing ridiculous about this at all, it's simply the fact that Google had evolved their location services based on their Android phones that now typically require GPS devices, and also their Google Maps picture database and the comparison mapping done whenever you set up a new phone, since this allows them complete access to your personal information including your Wi-Fi SSID among other data that Google collects about everyone.

Did you read my previous post above and take the time to check whether the Microsoft Account - Activity page indicates that your device is now connecting using IPv6 addresses rather than the older IPv4? If so, it's likely that this is the change that's actually occurred that is causing the inaccurate location information, since these new IPv6 addresses often haven't been used before and thus may not be accurate in the registration information that's the responsibility of your Internet ISP to maintain.

This is a classic problem when using PC type equipment that rarely contain GPS devices, though as I stated above, it's generally been fixed long ago for the older IPv4 addresses, since those were typically assigned decades ago and since there's far less of them, it was a smaller problem to solve as well.

The entire reason that IPv6 was created was to massively expand the number of IP addresses from the relatively small, legacy IPv4 address space of roughly 4 billion, to 1,028 times as many with IPv6. However, that obviously also increases the problem of inaccurate locations exponentially as well, which is simply part of what Microsoft knew would have to be improved by both Regional Internet Registries (RIR's) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) when they started to make the evolution to switch to the new addressing scheme on their own servers roughly a year or two ago.

Understanding IPv6 Geolocation: Challenges and Tools

Someone above asked about reverting to the old IPv4 addresses to solve this, but that's really not a good idea, since IPv6 will be the future. Instead, it's better if those of you having these issues first confirm that the addresses you're getting are either IPv4, for example something like 123.123.123.123, or instead the much longer IPv6 that looks like 3002:0bd6:0000:0000:0000:ee00:0033:6778.

If this recently changed, which you can easily see by looking back at previous login history on that same Microsoft Activity page, then go to either your ISP's Support forums or other offerings and look for others asking these same questions. If there aren't any, start a new thread there to ask whether they've properly set up the location information for the IPv6 addresses they assign to your routers or other devices within your home.

You'll also see in the article above that using things like a VPN or other similar routing issues can affect what the servers at the other end of a connection perceive as your location, so make sure you aren't using one of these before blaming the issue on anyone else including your ISP.

My assumption is that the recent Windows Updates that seem to have kicked this issue off for many PC users most likely included some improvements to the IPv6 support for the networking components in your device, resulting in your own device acquiring an IPv6 address that as long as all of the other devices (routers and switches) on the Internet between you and the Microsoft servers support IPv6 as well, will result in the initial attempt to connect using IPv6. Since most of these major Internet devices have supported IPv6 for over a decade, it's often only the client devices at home that needed an updated driver for this to work.

Rob

Thanks very much Rob. Do you know if there is a way to force W11 to revert to IPV4 addresses, and thus reset my W11 location based on the more accurate, if older, IPV4 addressing by my ISP?

My ISP, by the way, is Starlink. I suspected Starlink was the problem, but then again an iPhone and IPads at my current address and none of them gets the address wrong. But as you said, that may be because those devices have GPS location components that my laptop does not.

Nick

Nick,

Your situation with Starlink may be somewhat unique due to the satellite provided connection, but since the IP address provided should really be associated with your home location, I'd think they might have solved this by permanently assigning an address to your local device.

However, in your case that's what you'd want to bring to the Starlink Support as a question, since if they're dynamically assigning these addresses literally on-the-fly, then you'd either get an IP associated with the 15-mile zone I see in articles that your device is assigned to, or possibly even worse, one from a larger pool of addresses used in your general region or country.

I can't really believe they'd have bothered to make IPv6 available to solve the individual device routing issues it exists to resolve though, while still just assigning them randomly rather than to a specific location. So inaccurate location information related to your own specific assigned IPv6 address seems more likely in any case.

Rob