Guest additions confuse clock in linux guest (windows 7 host)

[Adrian]

In broken state, guest reports UTC time as local time. No combination of checkboxes and config files inside or outside of the guest seems to help.

Scenario:

New Windows 7 laptop with Core i7 (Sandy Bridge), 64 bit. Install VirtualBox 4.1.2 Create VM expecting ubuntu 64 bit: notice VBox correctly guesses that the hardware clock will be UTC. Install Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 64bit in new VM, specifying timezone near Hong Kong, guest should be online during installation and therefore do ntp early. Notice that the clock is good before installing guest additions. Install guest additions, clock now shows UTC time, not local time, but thinks it's local time. E.g. on my box in China, at midnight UTC, "date -R" thinks it's midnight in China and 4pm in London (winter), when it's actually 8am in China and midnight in London. Try every combination of /etc/default/rcS -> UTC=yes/no, vbox:settings:guest hw clock=UTC, even using vboxmanage to inhibit clock sync. Nothing helps. This is a total show stopper for me and I'm now installing ubuntu natively, which is a bummer cos windows does some things better, like Chinese characters.