How to stop windows time synchronization

In a testing scenario where there are calculations depending on the current time, it may be useful to set the windows time to a fixed date.

The problem is that the NTP time source in Windows Server 2008 will sync the time with the internet or the active directory. To stop this synchronization, the service windows time can be stopped or even un-installed.

This is where de command w32tm comes in:

w32tm /unregister

Also to stop the windows time service:

net stop "windows time"

Now the date can be fixed.

The problem is that the windows authentication is going to fail when trying to connect those servers. The problem isn’t a issue if the testing scenario is to set the sql server database server date and you can use sql server authentication.

Good testing.