Change clock without admin privileges

[xwb]

My mother-in-law is illiterate: she was never taught to read English or Chinese and doesn't not understand computers at all. We normally set up the laptop for her to watch movies with VLC player. All she has to do is hit the space bar to play and hit the space bar to stop. She has her own non-admin account with one desktop icon.

I forgot to disable to screen blanking. When the screen is blank, she presses random keys to see if it will start playing again. Apart from corrupting the disk a couple of times by excessive random power downs, she has somehow managed to change the time on the PC. The PC never loses time when any other literate person uses it. When the mother-in-law uses it, the clock can sometimes jump by 4 hours. How is this possible? This is XPHome.

Has anyone experienced such things with little kids or illiterate people? Do you know how they do it? Can this loophole be disabled?

 

[goombawaho]

I don't think this is related to her PC literacy or otherwise. Have you confirmed that if another user logs into the PC right after her, that the time is correct??

If so, I'm kind of stumped, but the normal troubleshooting applies here (and you didn't indicate that you had done it):
1. Bad CMOS battery / Wrong BIOS time
2. Incorrect time zone setting
3. Daylight savings time updates not applied (does not explain the 4 hour difference)

 

[xwb]

I'm as stumped as everyone else. This isn't the first occurrence: she has also done it at my sister in law's place. Sister in law also rang up to ask how she managed to change the time.

CMOS battery is fine. Timezone is correct. Daylight savings are on. There is no other user who logs into that machine either locally or remotely. M-I-L is the only one who uses it.

She manages to do what no other computer literate person is able to do. Maybe I have to have a 2nd camera videoing the keyboard. Problem is, I can't even ask her because she has Alzeimer's. She can't remember what she pressed. In fact, most of the time, she'll just say she didn't do anything because she can't remember her actions from one minute to the next.

I am just totally intrigued as to how she does it.

 

[goombawaho]

If you really want to solve it, you have to have another user name on that computer and login with it to compare what happens with that user - first without administrator priveleges and then with.

I know why you don't want to do that (besides the hassle factor), but that would prove as to whether it's A) related to her particular user or B) because her user is not an administrator. After that test, it can only be something she's actually DOING.

Maybe some smart person will come by the "how she does it" brilliant analysis.

 

[xwb]

I really don't know what I'm going to do once I've found out how she does it. I suppose it is like watching one of those old Colombo movies. You know whodunnit but the question is how. I just want to know how she manages to do something that every sysadmin I've talked to says is impossible. I suppose it is just the satisfaction of knowing some random sequence that allows her to do the not theoretically possible.

I've reinstalled XP twice so far due to disk corruption. Faster to reinstall (only 30 minutes) than to do a disk check. It hasn't happened in the last 2 months since the reinstall.

 

[mscallisto]

Maybe your event viewer may help.

If you sync your clock time with an internet time server if will create a system event showing what happened, e.g. success or failure etc.; so I'm thinking, if your MILaw caused the time problem it may be recorded as a system event for you to view.

Start > Settings > Control Panel and doubleClick Administrative Tools.
DoubleClick Event Viewer and click on the System folder to see if any errors are disclosed.

If you see any line with the Source Heading equal to "W32Time" then double click that line to see the explanation.

Just a thought

Sam

 

[Sympology]

Long time since I used XP, but is she changing the Time Zone, not the time?

On W7 (from what I can see as I am an admin so hard to test)
Change Time and Date requires Admin privileges, changing Time Zone, does not.


Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

 

[Sympology]

Way to little sleep.
So no in theory you can't change it UNLESS it's been granted, so it's a yes and no, you can change the time if you have been granted it (or it's corrupted and doing it anyway)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300022

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

 

[strongm]

>every sysadmin I've talked to says is impossible

Not just sysadmins. Microsoft say it to. Changing the system time is highly security-sensitive because of the significant knock on effect it can have. There is a very specific priviloege that allows it to be changed,that is only (normally) assigned to Administrators and Power Users.

 

[goombawaho]

Are we back to a bad CMOS battery possibly?

 

[xwb]

The CMOS battery is good (even though the PC is about 10 years old). I'll check time zones and the events when the time leaps. Hasn't happened since the machine was last redone but then again, she hasn't gotten it the state where it goes blank or died in the middle of watching a movie because it ran out of battery power. That is when she starts her random keying.