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Change UUID of VM with UUID of real HD

Posted: 4. Apr 2011, 11:53
by Napoleone
Hello, I'm a new in the forum. Thank you for your participation in the topic. I'm Italian and I don't speak English well and so I want to apologize for my bad English...

I have a dual both PC, in one partition I have installed Ubuntu 10.04 and in the other one Windows XP.
I use Virtualbox on my Ubuntu partition where I virtualize Windows XP.
On my real (not virtual) Windows XP I have a free software that I want to import and use on my virtual Windows XP.

The problem is that this free software have a license. I don't want to ask a new one because it is a long procedure.
I know that this software check some information of the hard disk where it works (maybe the UUID).
My Idea is to try change the UUID of my vdi image with the UUID of my real hard disk and then copy the software in the virtual machine.

1) Can I change my UUID without create a new VM?

With comand:

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blkid
The answer is:

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/dev/sda2: UUID="16B4D7D8B4D7B887" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda3: TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda4: UUID="e09d625a-7ead-4b3b-aa23-b90fc44fa24d" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda5: LABEL="Dati" UUID="13EC58FC76198431" TYPE="ntfs" 
The partition with Windows XP have this UUID:

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/dev/sda2: UUID="16B4D7D8B4D7B887" TYPE="ntfs" 
My virtual machine have this UUID:

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UUID:            fc214cea-3321-4fb2-a916-452f2ed6f398
I also try to create a new VM with UUID="16B4D7D8B4D7B887" but virtualbox give me an error....

When I use the comand:

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VBoxManage createvm --uuid 16B4D7D8B4D7B887
the answer is

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error: Invalid UUID format 16B4D7D8B4D7B887
2) What is the problem?

Thank you very much, I hope someone have a solution.

Re: Change UUID of VM with UUID of real HD

Posted: 5. Apr 2011, 20:10
by Sasquatch
The problem is very obvious: the UUID of an NTFS partition is not in the same format and length of the UUID of a VDI.

Re: Change UUID of VM with UUID of real HD

Posted: 6. Apr 2011, 23:04
by Napoleone
Ok....
I noticed that the format of UUID of Linux partition is the same of the format of UUID of VDI. Do you think that exist a relation?
And so you say me that no exist a way for solve my problem.

If I can't solve my problem in this way, I ask an other question.

If I ask a new license and re-install that software in this VM, in the future can I do a clone of my Vi and export it on a Virtalbox installed in an other computer or in an other OS?

If it is possible I will re-ask the license, and so in the future I don't need to do again this procedure.

In the specificity the clone of VI must have the same simulated hardware (UUID etc etc), becouse the software check the hardware info.