0

I often remote into customers' computers and last night I had to temporarily change the date/time back 3 days on a customer's server to re-enter some tickets into their POS system to fix an issue we had. Not long after changing the date I lost my connection and was not able to reconnect until after they rebooted the server this morning .

I also recently had another problem connecting a computer a network that was resolved after I fixed the date on the computer.

Is this coincidental or will a wrong date cause a computer to lose its network connection? In case it matters, I was using Team Viewer.

Improve this question
6
  • 3
    Are you using KRB authentication for the remote connection? Kerberos auth will fail if the time difference is over 5 min. Once you change the time on the machine, the difference between that and the token it grabbed causes the auth attempts to fail until a new token is issued. This happens either by reboot or just waiting until the token expires and is requested again by the client.
    – MaQleod
    Mar 13, 2014 at 16:02
  • Changing a computer's time is never a good solution to fix a problem. It can cause lots of issues
    – Keltari
    Mar 13, 2014 at 16:04
  • @Keltari I absolutely agree with you and I hate doing it. But there are a number of database tables that are updated when a ticket is entered into the POS system and the system doesn't give us a way to tell it we want to enter a ticket for a different time so this is my only option. (Reason we need to do this is because the system was down and these were tickets taken by hand that need to be entered now that the system is back up). There is simply no other alternative besides telling my customer his reports are going to be wrong... not doing that.
    – BVernon
    Mar 13, 2014 at 16:12
  • 1
    @MaQleod Just to confirm what I think I'm hearing: Changing the date could cause my connection to drop because the token becomes invalid... but rebooting the server allows me to reconnect with a fresh token. So theoretically if I have to ever do this again I may be able to change the time and then reboot the machine immediately before it invalidates my token, and then I should be able to reconnect when it comes back up?
    – BVernon
    Mar 13, 2014 at 16:15
  • If the server is on a domain its time may/will probably be reset upon reboot/reconnect with the DC.
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Mar 13, 2014 at 17:17

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

Team Viewer seems to use the same technology as SSL as you can see from here:

http://www.teamviewer.com/en/help/14-How-secure-is-TeamViewer.aspx

SSL usually is very sensitive to date/time. Just like any other SSL application, it seems that Team Viewer senses that something is wrong and drops the connection.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .