virtualbox.org

Martin wrote:Maybe you could change the thread title to "Which changes trigger a reactivation in a Windows guest?"

Snap!

Sorry to cause confusion I raised a new thread for my issue
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23381

mpack, you can change it yourself. Just edit the subject of your first post .

Sasquatch wrote:mpack, you can change it yourself. Just edit the subject of your first post .

Oh yeah... I didn't realize it was that simple! Done.

Not wanting to let a good puzzle go unsolved, I have the detail behind Sasquatch's observation about the VM UUID...

Windows 7 (and potentially other programs) can check the DMI System UUID of the motherboard of the machine they are running on.
The DMI System UUID is sort of a serial number of the motherboard, but there is also a separate serial number field.
If this changes, presumably the motherboard has changed, which triggers activation.

By default, VirtualBox uses the VM UUID for the DMI System UUID, but this can be overridden: Useful link courtesy of bilou_gateux: DMIDecode for Windows.

MarkCranness wrote:The DMI System UUID is sort of a serial number of the motherboard, but there is also a separate serial number field.
If this changes, presumably the motherboard has changed, which triggers activation.

Next thing, how do you query this value?

vbox4me2 wrote:Next thing, how do you query this value?

DMIDecode, part of most(?) Linux installs, or DMIDecode for Windows (An alternative link to the one bilou_gateux suggested, and probably more trustworthy as it is hosted at SourceForge).

I have a student retail XP set which includes a XP64 copy and a XP32 copy, each of which has its own key.

I am running XP64 on my laptop and XP32 in a VM in VBox. Both were activated once.

I had to uninstall and reinstall Vbox in exactly the same hardware configuration and when I reinstalled XP32 in the new VM it triggered reactivation.

Anybody knows why and how do I resolve the issue?

Thanks.

when I reinstalled XP32 in the new VM it triggered reactivation

Do you mean that you reused the VDI or do you mean that you did a clean install of the OS?

reinstalled from scratch.

Well there you go. That will always trigger activation, guaranteed.

Ok, so what do I do now?

Activate it. That is all you can do. All new Windows installs must be activated.

Perryg wrote:Activate it. That is all you can do. All new Windows installs must be activated.

Unless, that is, you had the foresight to copy the wpa.dbl and wpa.bak (if it exists) files to a shared folder, and restore them in safe mode after the reinstall. That works provided the hardware is identical before and after. This is a useful trick if you are one of those who believes that Windows benefits from a complete reinstall every now and then (I'm not one of those btw - I prefer to just keep my OS lean and tidy as I go).

@oao: uninstalling and then reinstalling VBox on the same PC (or even on different PCs) should not have required you to reinstall all your guest OS's. Something to bear in mind for the future. An uninstall of VBox on a PC should leave the .VirtualBox folder intact to be picked up by the new install. It's also possible to copy that folder to another drive for backup purposes, to be restored in the correct location later.

Thanks, mpack.

I am familiar with the 2-file method for preventing reactivation.

In this particular case I had to uninstall both VBox and the guest OS and reinstall from scratch and I did not have access to the 2 files (see next).

I did however have an earlier image backup of the drives with the old install and I was able to restore the old install and thus kill the reactivation (since it was a disk image I did not have access to individual files).

I will now make sure I backup the 2 files so that I have them next time.