I am a web developer and technology geek. I enjoy being healthy and hanging out with my family.If you run VirtualBox you may eventually run into problems with the time or time sync within your VM guest. You can run this command on the host to disable time sync:
vboxmanage setextradata <vmname> “VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled” “1″
Just replace <vmname> with the name of your guest. On Windows hosts, you’ll need to change the command to “VBoxManage”.
You will most likely want to set the client to sync with a time server after this. On Windows clients, just double click on the time and go to the Internet Time tab. Check the box and choose time.nist.gov (better reliability).
I needed to solve this because QuickBooks Pro 2000 complains about the system time being changed continuously while in multi-user mode.
I found this simple VirtualBox time sync tip in a post titled Synchronize a Virtualized Domain Controller with External Time Servers.
Using Guest Additions for Windows,
this GetHostTimeDisabled option is ignored.
Isn’t it ?
VirtualBox Ver.3.0.8 r53138
Host WindowsXP pro SP3 / Inbox is Windows XP SP2, no network-adapter
Tadanori: Not sure about a Windows host, but I’m on 3.0.8 r53138 in Ubuntu with WinXP as the guest. I haven’t had any problems with the setting, and my QuickBooks is still running without any time sync messages. It’s running Guest Additions.
Really helpful, thanks!
[...] A way to disable the timesync was posted by Rick Guyer: VirtualBox: Disable time sync between host and client. [...]
Thanks was very helpful
[...] (2009.Jun.08) VirtualBox: Disable time sync between host and client http://rickguyer.com/virtualbox-disable-time-sync-between-host-and-client/ [...]
Hi,
on Debian the Command is: VBoxManage
I also had to Reboot the Windows Guest, after that the Timesync was disabled.
Thanks
I had to edit the entry in the machines xml file manually, because the command line approach seems to lead to special character corruption. Also do not copy/paste the line above, as most browsers will give you the wrong quotation marks and most shells are very strict.