Problem setting rest pose

Hey guys I have a fully rigged character with the mesh properly parented to the armature already. when i go into pose mote, hit CTRL + A, then apply pose as rest pose, the armature stays in the new rest pose position but my mesh defaults back to the previous pose it was in (see picture). Please help!!

dunno but before makeing mesh as child of armature try to apply transform for both and only then use ctrl+p and automatic weights. then enter into pose mode select all bones and push one anim key (I key) with locRotScale.

Sorry I’m a total noob. By apply transform do you mean the modifier? If so, how do you do that on the bones. I got the character from CC3