How to freeze date/time in VirtualBox?

[nabamer.]

Hello

I would like to ask how you can freeze the time and date in the virtual bios so that it always starts at the sme time. I am running a Vista x64 host and a x32 Ubuntuu 8.10.
I only found a thread which I can't access http://www.virtualbox.org/search?q=free ... on&wiki=on (the first result). I found out that in VmWare this can be achived by editing the *.vmx file and adding:

time.synchronize.continue = "FALSE"
time.synchronize.restore = "FALSE"
time.synchronize.resume.disk = "FALSE"
time.synchronize.shrink = "FALSE"
rtc.startTime = 1199206860
time.synchronize.tools.startup = FALSE

Does anyone know how to achieve similar results in Virtualbox?

Thank you for your time

[TerryE]

You can't set an exact start time in VBox but you can set a BIOS time offset from your current host system clock with

Code: Select all

VBoxManage modifyvm <name> -biossystemtimeoffset <msec>

There is nothing to stop you writing a simple script to compute this delta, do the modifyvm and then start your machine. This should enable you to fix the start time within a second or so, but not exactly the same.

[kwho4]

Hi, I am a newbie of virtualbox. I also have the above similar problem. I aim to test a software. Its trial version allows me to use only 14 days. If I can freeze the system date/time in the guest OS, I would have enough time to test it. So, anyone know how to freeze the time? Thanks a lot.

[mpack]

Helping you would be a breach of the licensing terms of the software in question. The copyright holders allow you to test the software for 14 days. If that is not enough then you should approach them about it.