diff --git a/Lib/test/support/__init__.py b/Lib/test/support/__init__.py
index 9d0d3d9c9b6..d80472d8776 100644
--- a/Lib/test/support/__init__.py
+++ b/Lib/test/support/__init__.py
@@ -1421,7 +1421,7 @@ def skip_if_buggy_ucrt_strfptime(test):
     global _buggy_ucrt
     if _buggy_ucrt is None:
         if(sys.platform == 'win32' and
-                locale.getdefaultlocale()[1]  == 'cp65001' and
+                locale.getpreferredencoding(False)  == 'cp65001' and
                 time.localtime().tm_zone == ''):
             _buggy_ucrt = True
         else: