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I am a developer in need of doing some temporal unit testing on my local XP box. I am local admin but there is a group policy enforced centrally that prohibits changing local time (a severe case of managment treating in-house devs same as every other user in the company).

I wonder if there is a way to bypass the group policy using my admin privileges and get the job done. Thanks!

H. Stieglits
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  • possible duplicate of [Can I override a group policy setting as a machine admin?](http://serverfault.com/questions/90978/can-i-override-a-group-policy-setting-as-a-machine-admin) – Evan Anderson Jan 05 '11 at 17:09
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    even if there is, be wary: Windows domain authentication is Kerberos-based, and therefore very time-sensitive. If the local clock is out of sync with the domain controller's by more than X (default 5) minutes, the DC will assume replay attack and deny access. After that logons won't work, Windows filesharing... just about everything uses those tickets. – Michael Lowman Jan 05 '11 at 17:16
  • And why should they treat devs any differently? Are you special? Have you described your need to do this to management or are you assuming that they just instinctively know what you need? – joeqwerty Jan 05 '11 at 18:23

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Have you considered (and I know this is not the exact answer you were looking for) injecting some mocked/stub time functions into the code you are trying to test? It may achieve the results you want, without having to tinker with the time, and be tests you can run elsewhere (like on a CI server, where you really wouldn't want to change the real time).

Danny Staple
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  • No, it wouldn't be possible pass the date/time on this specific occassion: I'm trying to test that after the change execution enviroment's "local" time comes from a remote server and not the system clock. Hence I need a visible difference between the two. – H. Stieglits Jan 12 '11 at 14:32
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If you change your workstation time, you break Kerberos, which is part of AD. Don't do it. If you need a test machine, get a test machine that's not part of the domain.

mfinni
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