Vista in a Virtual PC 2

[Nelviticus]

I have an MSDN subscription so I'm licensed to install Vista for test purposes and can activate it up to 10 times. I've created a Virtual PC, installed Vista Ultimate on it, activated it and everything has been fine up to that point, but it seems that if I change anything at all - even running the same VM on a different host PC attached to a different network - it wants to be activated again.

Has anyone else run into this and am I doing something wrong? I can understand that it would want to be re-activated if you changed a significant piece of hardware, but the network card, good grief! I think that's what's happening, it sees it's on a different network and thinks the (virtual) network card has changed.

I know XP will let you change small things like that without requiring reactivation but is it the same with Vista? If so it makes it impossible to have a VPC that I can use at home and at work.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[linney]

What MSDN Subscription (name or type) are you talking about, I don't see any such activations restriction in my (Visual Studio Pro w/MSDN Prem.) subscription?

I too would have thought that a licensed copy of Vista, running in a Virtual machine, on a fully licensed host machine, would be OK?

This thread talks about Vista Activation.

Vista Trial version?
thread1583-1443739


Windows Vista Genuine Advantage Validation Issues.

http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?q=Windows vista Genuine Advantage Validation&mkt=en-AU

 

[smah]

MSDN & Technet do officially have 10 activation limits. I've also seen it somewhere officially but it's hard to find. Search the MSDN managed newsgroups for 10 activation limit. Past discussions seem to indicate that the limit is 10 machines, not 10 times.

Anyway, I have copied the Virtual Hard Drive from an activated Vista installation and used it for a new Virtual PC without any trouble. However, that was on the same host system. I have never tried it on a different host, but in reality, I wouldn't be surprised that re-activation would be needed on a different host. If you think of it from the anti-piracy standpoint, the possibility to copy an already activated .vhd to other systems would be a problem.

 

[linney]

Further to the points made by "Smah", have a look around here.

http://www.google.com/search?q=10+activation+limit+msdn+windows&rls=com.microsoft:

 

[Nelviticus]

Well thanks for the responses both of you. Reading a few of the threads from the links that Linney posted (why can I never Google as well as you can?) it sounds like nobody is quite sure how the activation limit works in practice. It seems that:

- You can use an MSDN key on up to 10 different machines;
- You can re-install it on one of those 10 machines as often as you like, and although you'll have to re-activate each time it still counts as one installation;
- The database at Microsoft which records your machine activations possibly gets cleared every 120 days;
- Nobody is quite sure whether the kind of re-activation request that I'm getting (where the grace period becomes 3 days) will count as a new machine.

I think I will just re-activate and cross my fingers. If the worst comes to the worst I will just have to ring Microsoft and explain the situation - the limit is only really there to stop people using their keys to flog dodgy copies of Windows, which I'm not doing.

Thanks

Nelviticus