posted by steve | Category: Useful Items That I Forget | | 7 Comments »
Virtualbox (or its Guest Additions) have this annoying habit of automatically keeping the clock in sync with the host, regardless of the settings that one tries to implement within the guest itself. For example, in a Windows 7 guest that I’m trying to use for consistent screenshots I need to set the clock to specific dates. However, as soon as I set it, Virtualbox changes it back.
Here’s how to change it:
vboxmanage setextradata “<vmname>” “VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled” “1″
Tags: feature
7 Responses to “Disable Time Sync with Virtualbox”
Leave a Reply
Categories
- Current Projects (35)
- Linux & Open Source (6)
- Microsoft & Closed Source (3)
- Random Rants (36)
- Reviews (4)
- Useful Items That I Forget (31)
- Useful Sites That Everyone Already Knows (2)
Archives
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- February 2011
- September 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- September 2008
- August 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- March 2007
- December 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- December 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- December 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- July 2004
hi. I tried this, but it does not want to work for me:
vboxmanage setextradata “C:\Users\myname\Desktop\Virtual Box\My 10 sample.vdi” “VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled” “1″
any thoughts?
Thanks
Hmm. I think you need to specify the actual virtual machine name, not the vdi file. So if the name of the virtual machine is “Ubuntu Linux” you’d put that in place of the in my example.
Let me know if that helps.
Steve
just adding the VM-Name didnt work for me. You have to use the full path to the .vbox-file and not the .vdi-file. The .vdi file is just the virtual harddisc.
You can open the .vbox file with an editor like notepad (or even the internet explorer). After using this command, it will add this line:
I just verified. I have a VM which shows up in the VirtualBox Manager GUI as “Windows 7 – Office”. I entered the command:
vboxmanage setextradata “Windows 7 – Office” “VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled” “1″
Then I booted the machine, went in to change the time from 5:30pm (current local time) to 2:30pm. It stayed as 2:30 (which in Windows 7 it wouldn’t do without this change). I rebooted the VM and it’s still at 2:30. Well, 2:32 because a couple minutes elapsed now.
But in any event, this does indeed work for me. VirtualBox 4.1.8 on a Mac.
It did not work for me…
Ive even opened my “.vbox-prev” file with an XML editor, and there is an entry under the tag:
The VM has been shut down and rebooted, but after I change the “internal” date, it still changes back to the host time within seconds.
((
Ive got a VirtualBox 4.1.8 r75467, host: Win7 SP1, guest: WinXP SP3.
As the comment removes any “code”
, here is the missing part of my previous comment:
…under the tag: “ExtraData”…
and the missing row was:
” ExtraDataItem name=”vboxinternal/devices/vmmdev/0/config/gethosttimedisabled” value=”1″ “
Dear Blog owner! Sorry, I did not want to flood, please remove my previous comments. There was only the problem that the mentioned XML tag was case sensitive (I think). Ive changed ”vboxinternal/devices/vmmdev/0/config/gethosttimedisabled” to “VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled” and now it is working fine!! Sorry again for my 3 comment entries, please ignore/remove them. Kind regards!