VMware Workstation guest OS (Windows) resets date/time to host on restart

Question

Everytime I restart my windows guest machine, it resets the date/time to the host date/time.

How can I change it permanently?

UPDATE: Time sync is already disabled in VMware tools

Answer 1

I had the same issue.

No matter what I tried in the .VMX file or options to set, it always seems to sync the time.

To solve it, I booted in to safe mode and actually disabled the VMware tools service. I cannot remember now if it was the whole tools or if there was just one that was for time sync.

Then edited the time.

This worked and survived a reboot.

Answer 2

It turns out it was the windows synchronization service. I disabled automatic time update with the time servers and now it stays changed.

UPDATE: Turns out I was wrong, it DID change back after a while. Disabling VMware service does work!

Answer 3

Assuming you have the VMware tools installed in the guest, you might try

tools.syncTime = "FALSE"

in your .vmx file.

A related question.

Answer 4

Maybe you guest windows virtual machine is joined to the same domain as your host machine and syncing to the server who has the PDC emulator role.

Answer 5

You should not have to disable the VMWare service, it is useful for other reasons. Try setting all the time sync related settings:

tools.syncTime = 0
time.synchronize.continue = 0
time.synchronize.restore = 0
time.synchronize.resume.disk = 0
time.synchronize.shrink = 0
time.synchronize.tools.startup = 0

I was experiencing the same problem you are seeing, and this fixed it for me.

Answer 6

Actually the .VMX didn't contain any of these parameters except tool.syncTime = "False". Just try to edit/add these parameters to the .VMX file
tools.syncTime = 0
time.synchronize.continue = 0
time.synchronize.restore = 0
time.synchronize.resume.disk = 0
time.synchronize.shrink = 0
time.synchronize.tools.startup = 0

After setting up a desired time in guest OS and after reboot, it came up properly with the desired time.

Thanks guys.