Is it possible for software to recognise a virtual machine

[RajB1]

Hi All
This is my first post here after using VB for some time. Let me jut say that VB is pretty amazing!!
I'm using a VB on my mac but with Windows host. When installing a certain piece of scientific software on it, it will not run as detects that the software has been installed on a VM. I just wanted to know if this is possible? The licence for the software is based upon the PC's MAC address, HDD serial number and HDD firmware number. In my VM these details are absent and this approach has worked fine using the previous version of the software I was using.

Thus, is it possible for installed software to recognise it is using a VM, and if so is there anything I can do to overcome this?
I'm thinking along the lines of spoofing the MAC address and trying to do the same with the HDD serial number and firmware version but the last time I tried this is didn't change any settings in the VM.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
cheers

[mpack]

Yes, it's not only possible but easy for software to detect that it's running inside a VM. Whether you can trick specific software is impossible to say without knowing what checks it does, but there are some checks it could do that are impossible to work around.

Also bear in mind that VirtualBox is a hypervisor, not a simulator. I.e. guest software runs natively on the host CPU, it's only the host peripheral hardware that it can't touch. Hence if you move the VM to a PC with a different CPU, the guests hardware signature will change.