VMWare & WinXP

December 4, 2005

———- Original Message ———————————-
From: Chris Merkel
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 11:15:50 -0600

>
>> I tried
>> calling Microsoft and going through the automated process on
>> the phone, but it says my installation is invalid. Is there
>> any way around this (I am not trying to cheat Microsoft here)
>> or any way to speak to a Microsoft representation to explain
>> my situation? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
>My guess is that it won’t activate because the hardware hash generated from
>one VMWare machine to another will be nearly identical. Take a look at the
>table here:
>http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/evaluate/xpactiv.mspx
>
>On a VMWare machine, the only things that would need to be different would
>be MAC Address and HDD volume serial number. If the developers didn’t design
>the machines to be more unique, that may not be enough differentiation.
>
>I’ve never tried activation – the VMWare machines I use XP Pro in come from
>our volume license pool.
>
>I wonder if this problem exists using Microsoft’s Competing product: Virtual
>PC. I bet not. (Paging Dr. DOS…
>
>- Chris Merkel
>
>

It should activate just fine under vmware, I’ve done it a number of times myself. After reading another reply I’m also thinking the OP is trying to activate it as both the host and guest at the same time. Download a distro of linux and use that as the host and activate XP as the guest only, it will be much faster that way as well.

- If your host OS is MS winXp and guest is also the same and if you are using
the same license/keys, you are violating the MS licensing policy. You may
require a separate license For the Virtual PC I would suggest you use some
Linux for Host OS and install winXP as the guest.

Pl. follow the instructions VMWare has provided to activate the os you can
find them at

http://www.vmware.com/support/guestnotes/doc/guestos_winxp.html.

Also VMWare has VMTN forums which has good threads on issues like the one
you are facing you may do a search on the VMTN forums at

http://www.vmware.com/community/index.jspa?categoryID=1.

HTH
Ramki

- I run VMWare on XP as well. Installing XP into a VMWare virtual machine, then activating the OS has always worked fine for me.

You may experience problems if you are using the same, single retail license or OEM key to register the OS on the virtual machine that you have installed on the laptop.

Try another lic. key, be sure the copy of XP you are installing in the correct type for the key (retail,OEM,volume), and be sure the key has not been used on another computer that has already been activated (only applies if retail or OEM).

Hope this helps…

- As was stated in the original post, this IS an OEM version of the
software. That OEM license is NOT good on the virtual hardware being
presented to XP’s activation app. IT WILL NOT WORK.

You can call Microsoft for a new activation key SOMETIMES, but often
this doesn’t work either and you will actually have to open a service
ticket to resolve the issue (as I did with my thinkpad).

You will also need to remove this licensed copy of XP from the latop
BEFORE installing it in the virtual machine. Personally, I have vmware
running on SuSE 10 and it works well – and as I said, I went through
all of these pains to get here.

- Hmmm, I haven’t tried this in a VM situation, however, I reformat my hard
drive every 30 – 90 days (very paranoid) and use a little trick to avoid
having to constantly re-register. It might work for you.

Boot your system into Safe Mode.
Copy the C:\Windows\System32\wpa.dbl file to another directory.
Boot into Normal Mode.
Copy the wpa.dbl into the same directory in your Virtual system.

Should now be activated. Let me know if that works for you. I’m hoping to
setup VMWare on one of my XP systems shortly, so it would be nice to know if
that works beforehand.

Cheers!
Mark

Posted in Q & A