virtualbox.org

Having just spent 3 days and many hours installing a Win XP guest from an old WIN XP CD and fighting a Microsoft bug that slows WIndows update, I realize I need a safe and easy way to create another XP guest in the future.

I realize I could probably make a CD clone of my VB installation and I"ll look at that as one option, but it would includes all the programs I've installed in the guest and not be a clean install

There used to be way to take an existing install and create a new install CD that included all the applied updates. I found nLite, but it seems to be a much more complex tool than what I need and has a learning curve. I've lost track of what I used last time, but it was fairly simple except for setting some special settings when burning the CD.

Another question is licensing and access key, I happened to have a spare copy of Win XP that is not installed on any machine and used that key to install as a Guest OS. If I create a second XP guest and install using the same key, will Microsoft security servers consider that a different machine and terminate one of the guests after 30 days? Once I migrate all my machines to Windows 7, I will have other spare XP licenses, but that not be till March next year

Licensing matters should really be asked to copyright owner directly. Nobody here can give you legal advice of any value. And how the Microsoft server works wouldn't be public.

From my understanding, a VM or a physical computer is the same for Microsoft : an entity on which you install Windows. And you need one license per entity.

AFAIK (and I don't claim to be an expert), slipstreaming involves taking the official Windows install CD/DVD and adding or removing modules to/from it.

It doesn't involve taking software from a working PC and somehow knowing what an installer should do with it.

Cloning is the way to go - reinstalling should not be necessary. The time to consider making a "template" clone would have been immediately after the OS was installed to your satisfaction (e.g. with all updates), install basic apps (PDF reader, decent internet browser, WinZip or other archiving tool etc) then activated if necessary. You should try to avoid multiple activations in a short time. It may be worth your while to work backwards: uninstall apps you don't want in the template, install any apps that you do, then clone the disk using CloneVDI (set "Keep UUID" and "Compact" options) and replace the original VDI with the clone, hence restore the VM to the template state. After testing you would use full clones of this VM as your starting point (never use linked clones or snapshots btw).

Provided you only run one clone at a time I don't believe this would be a violation of the license agreement. It would be unreasonable for MS to expect users to buy a license for every backup copy of the OS, which I would argue is essentially all that clones are. But, as Noteirak says - my opinion is of no value to you if you get sued, and bear in mind that anyway, the legal position may depend on which jurisdiction you're in.