If you are running Windows 8, hit the Windows key and L at the same time. What do you see? It should be the lock screen complete with the date, time and weather. What format do the date and time take? It’s almost certainly the same as the clock in your taskbar – if you have opted to use 24 hour clock format, it will be used in both places. But this doesn’t have to be the case; customization is possible.

You might think that a quick visit to the Control Panel is all that’s needed to change the appearance of the Lock Screen time and date. To some extent this is true. The Region applet can be used to configure formatting, but this is a system-wide setting. By editing the registry it is possible to use different formatting on the lock screen.