virtualbox.org

Hi everyone!

I have a Dell Precision laptop that runs Fedora. Everything works fine! However, I need to activate my Windows 7 license before an audit. I rarely use the VM, but when I do, it comes in handy. So the setup is a Fedora host, and Windows 7 VM. The problem is that I cannot activate the license for Windows 7. I have tried manually entering the key, and a different OEM disc, but I have had no luck. Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas?

Thank you!

I know there's a phone-in activation Microsoft supplies. Is your guest unable to get to the internet to do on-line activation?

This basically amounts to "it doesn't work". We really need a better description of the problem before we can point to a solution. For example, is the problem that you have no internet? Is the Microsoft activation server failing?

I'm not sure what you mean by "manually entering the key" either. One thing I can tell you is that Dell used to be notorious for Windows Setup disks that would not activate on anything except original Dell hardware. A VM does not look like Dell hardware (e.g. it does not have a Dell BIOS). Whether this continues to be a problem with Win7 I have no idea - I was never a Dell PC customer.

Thank you for the reply! I do have internet access, however, it doesn't have that option! I was pretty bummed when I didn't see it there.

mpack wrote:This basically amounts to "it doesn't work". We really need a better description of the problem before we can point to a solution. For example, is the problem that you have no internet? Is the Microsoft activation server failing?

I'm not sure what you mean by "manually entering the key" either. One thing I can tell you is that Dell used to be notorious for Windows Setup disks that would not activate on anything except original Dell hardware. A VM does not look like Dell hardware (e.g. it does not have a Dell BIOS). Whether this continues to be a problem with Win7 I have no idea - I was never a Dell PC customer.

Sure thing, the hardware ID's change. Typically Windows looks for about 10 things when it tries to verify hardware on an OEM disk. As stated, since it is OEM, the product comes with the key already injected, so Windows will automagically take care of the activation. Now! I can get the key and try to "change product key" to another one that I have sitting around (the manual addition). But no avail. I was thinking that you would likely be correct about this, mpack. I have ran into a many problems with Dell and OEM copies. I don't really mess with Dell or any other major providers. This is a laptop that I am using at work, and imaged it with Linux. I just really like Linux. But if I have to image the computer back to Windows to satisfy the activation, I suppose I can do that

OR! Actually just thought about this. Can I partition the hard drive lets say, 50-50, with Windows and Linux, boot to the Linux install, and point a virtual machine to use the install of Windows? I know this can be accomplished in Parallels, but my curiosity has me wondering!

Thank you again for everyone's input!

You'll probably still run into activation issues trying to boot a Windows partition installed on your host drive as a Virtualbox guest (see viewtopic.php?t=33356 Windows 7 in guest and native), or re-installing Windows, imaging the install, then restoring the image back to a Virtualbox guest. Either way the hardware is going to look different in the guest. You're probably not going to be able to get around contacting Microsoft to activate. And if this install is truly an OEM they'll probably not let you, since OEM isn't supposed to be used off the original hardware, and a virtual machine is considered different hardware, even if it's run on the original host.

Only other choices I can think of are, buy a new license of Windows 7 (can be OEM to save $, your guest will be the original hardware), or do the dual-boot thing and just reboot when you need Windows.