Running Microcat in VirtualBox with correct date

[Gromit]

Hi All,

I finally got around to installing microcat.

I wanted to install it in a virtual machine so that there was no risk of replacing one of the DLLs in the windows\system32 folder with the cracked one, breaking my machine.

So I installed Sun's VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/), installed Windows XP in the virtual machine, and then installed Microcat.

On problem is that the machines in VirtualBox synchronise their date with the host machine. As microcat needs the date to be October 2006, this is annoying.

To get around this, and disable the date synchronisation, from the command prompt, run the following command:

C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox\vboxmanage setextradata <vmname> "VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled" "1"

In my case, my virtual machine is called "XP Base", so my command looked like this:

C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox\vboxmanage setextradata "XP Base" "VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled" "1"

Start the virtual machine and microcat runs perfectly on it, with no faffing around changing dates

[Gromit]

To add to this, I could at this point take a snapshot of the virtualbox machine if anyone wanted it, as you could have the machine up and running with microcat in about 1 minute, but it's 1.5GB, so I don't know where I could host it.

[landroversforever]

Great idea. the Auto date changer I have for microcat doesnt change the date back

[Gromit]

I'd read that a few times, which is why I chose the VM route.

[simonr]

I used to have (and probably still do) an app I wrote in VB which was a launcher for apps that needed the date changing.

You just drag shortcuts into a window, it then prompts for the system date required. When you select one of the shortcuts, it changes the system date, runs it in a shell and when the app exits, reverts the system date back to normal.

Came in very handy for running demo copies forever.

Si

[Gromit]

Sounds good Si. Being a professional typist , I was thinking of writing something similar, but decided to play with the VM at work. Now that it's built, I'll just take the image of the machine home on a USB stick and put it on my laptop

[landroversforever]

Need to find someone to host it!

[Gromit]

well if anyone wants the image, they could always pop a USB stick in the post to me.

[TheRecklessEngineer]

Rapidshare?

Several years ago, I had a piece of software that could be configured to pass any program you chose a particular date and time, without needing to reconfigure the system time. I can't remember what it was called, but was so useful for exactly these kinds of problems.

[Gromit]

Morning all. So, I have a few blank DVDs here and can make copies of the virtual machine image for anyone who is interested. It's the only way of distributing it (other than torrents) as it's about 3.5Gb now.

For all you technophobes, if you install Virtual Box and use this image, you get the pretty picture in the first post.

[Tobias]

Works wonderfully!

Thank yiu

Tobias

[sasha2001]

Rapidshare?

Several years ago, I had a piece of software that could be configured to pass any program you chose a particular date and time, without needing to reconfigure the system time. I can't remember what it was called, but was so useful for exactly these kinds of problems.

[/quote

backdate links to the exe and fools the date

works on 03/10 microcat and before no problem

http://www.backdate.net/

[Gromit]

Works wonderfully!

Thank yiu

Good to hear. You're welcome