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Random IT Qs of the day...
Q1) If I share a W7 VM with someone on a different PC, will it just run or will W7 need a new license key etc or (even worse) will W7 need to rebuilt from scratch claiming to be rogue SW.
Q2) One of my legit W7 VMs has just unlicensed itself as Microsoft have revoked the key I used to build it and I can't change to a new key for some reason, so looks like I'll have to rebuild it from scratch. Is there a workaround or am I just screwed and have to rebuild?
Q1) By "share" do you mean via RDP? in which case, you'll be fine, though you'll need Pro or Enterprise edition to do this.
Q2) Do you not have the option of telephone activation?
If you give the physical VM files to someone else then there is a good chance it will deteect that it has been moved to a new, different machine and unlicense itself.
For this reason, when we deliver a VM to a client for them to use for evaluation, we deliver it in an unlicensed state to start with, and then they license it as they require using their corporate windows key.
For Q2 - are you using an SLUI command (if so with what options and what error are you getting) or just trying to do it via Control Panel/System?
Thanks, I was thinking that would be the case..
As for telephone activation, I've been looking but can't find that option...
Telephone activation is a pain, but they will often send you a link now via text to a different interface online. Both are the workarounds for failed automatic online activation. Usually the telephone activation prompt only appears when the machine can’t activate online. If it doesn’t the number is 0800 018 8354.
If you give the physical VM files to someone else then there is a good chance it will deteect that it has been moved to a new, different machine and unlicense itself.
Is that actually the case?
Windows 7 isn't virtualisation-aware - ie, it doesn't know it's a VM and has no visibility of the host hardware beyond what VMware presents virtually. A bare-metal install will require reactivation if there's substantial hardware changes, eg a new motherboard. So logically I'd have thought that if you just move the VM's virtual disk image then it'd likely need reactivating as it's new "hardware," but if you moved the entire VM then it shouldn't because the virtual hardware layer hasn't changed at all?
Caveat: I could be wrong here, I don't know for certain and my VMware experience is mostly infrastructure rather than Player. I'm just thinking through how I'd expect it to behave.
iirc, and my knowledge of this may well be less current than yours, since we switched to using Hyper-V where possible and VirtualBox where we had to, windows 7 doesn't know about the virtualisation, but if the hardware the VM is on changes, then the hardware presented to windows 7 by vmware changes, as they are materially different - I know this is the way virtualbox works works, and I seem to remember VMware working in more or less the same fashion.
It may be possible to "trick" windows 7 by moving the vm to an identical machine hardware wise and hitting the "I moved this machine" button, or whichever of the move/copy options vmware gives you that doesn't update the various networking thing, as we used to do this in house, back in the dim dark mists of time.