virtualbox.org

I have a VM set up with a legit, activated win10 system. I'd like to do tests on that and the obvious/easy way to do that is to clone the VM, hack away at the clone. If it is OK, then I can do the same in my main VM... if it blows up, not a problem. In either case, when I'm done testing/playing around I plan to blow away the clone [and, of course, then make a new one when I want to test again].

My problem: when I clone the VM, the cloned VM comes up not-activated. There are a lot of settings [that I barely understand ] so I might be doing the wrong "kind" of clone, Windows says: Is there some collection of settings in the cloning operation that won't look like changed hardware?

The easiest workaround would be to just copy the whole guest folder to a safe place.
When you need to go back just replace the whole folder contents with this "safe copy".

So I guess what you're saying is that "clone" isn't really useful for Win10 VMs and I should just, as you say, copy the entire "master" vm to make a clone. Sounds OK by me... Thanks

The "clone" process creates a new, seperately usable VM. So it changes the virtual hardware enough to be a "different" PC for Windows.