I was testing some Reporting Services reports, but the test data was fairly old and some datasets were linked to the date, so I wasn’t getting proper results.
Instead of modifying the test data or the queries, the easy solution was to disable time synchronization and change the system time to 3 years in the past.
But changing the system time lead to an interesting problem:
Suddenly the server shut down automatically with no warning.
No chance was given to save open documents or to cancel shutdown.
I started up the virtual machine again and noticed that the system time had been reset.
Found this explanation for the behavior in Event Viewer:
Log Name: System Source: User32 Date: 27-09-2013 11:14:19 Event ID: 1074 Task Category: None Level: Information Keywords: Classic User: SYSTEM Computer: TestServer Description: The process C:\Windows\system32\wlms\wlms.exe (TESTSERVER) has initiated the shutdown of computer TESTSERVER on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for the following reason: Other (Planned) Reason Code: 0x80000000 Shutdown Type: shutdown Comment: The license period for this installation of Windows has expired. The operating system is shutting down.
Be aware that Windows was activated and continued to be activated after it was restarted.
This happened with Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard, but I suspect it’s an issue with other versions and editions.
Conclusion
Apparently Windows doesn’t tolerate running with a wrong system time, even for testing purposes.
Fortunately wlms.exe is only present on evaluation versions of Windows, so this particular issue should never occur on production systems.
In any case, a correct system time is always desired for a number of things like logging dates, scheduling, synchronization, certificate validation and so on.