Windows activation

[Konstantin01]

After upgrading VB to the new version and reinstalling Guest Additional, guest windows OS lost activation and should be reactivated.
Is it anyway to prevent losing activation?

Thank you

Konstantin

[mpack]

Upgrading VirtualBox and/or the GAs does not cause Windows to lose activation. What might cause Windows to lose activation is rebooting the VM, but in that case the deactivation would be due to something like a change of host.

Moved to "Windows Guests". Please choose a forum which is appropriate for your question!

[Konstantin01]

Ok. Thank you.

[scottgus1]

Mpack, is this:

What might cause Windows to lose activation is rebooting the VM

what you meant to write?

[mpack]

Yes, that appears to be what I intended - I don't see a typo. Problem?

The point being that rebooting Windows may cause it to immediately do an activation check which would otherwise be done in some indefinite future.

[scottgus1]

Interesting, OK, I can see how that could happen. I was thinking of moving a VM to another host or cloning, which might cause reactivation. Thanks!

[mpack]

I should clarify that it is perfectly possible for a new VirtualBox update to have a bug which could cause Windows to be deactivated. However that hasn't happened - we know because we'd definitely notice it (almost every user has at least one Windows VM), so the OPs problem is something else, most likely what I described.

[BillG]

Every time you reboot Windows, no matter whether it is physical or virtual, it checks the hardware to make sure nothing has changed (as mpack said). If it has changed it needs to make sure that the new arrangement works (and add drivers etc to make sure it does). It also checks whether the changes exceed the validation limits (using its mysterious calculations) and if they do lets you know.