Windows XP mode VM interesting issue

Just thought I would give a heads up here.

I installed Windows Virtual PC and XP mode. I was creating a sandbox environment
for a customer and decided to use the XP mode VM as the client in an Exchange
scenario.

When I took this VM from my windows 7 PC to another system, this forced activation
to occur. I cannot activate using any key. I reproduced the issue using
a windows XP VM built by itself on my windows 7 PC and brought into the sanbox
environment and the issue did not occur.

So the XP mode VM cannot be moved to another system. Interesting..

Brad Bird wrote:

> Just thought I would give a heads up here.
>
> I installed Windows Virtual PC and XP mode. I was creating a sandbox environment
> for a customer and decided to use the XP mode VM as the client in an Exchange
> scenario.
>
> When I took this VM from my windows 7 PC to another system, this forced activation
> to occur. I cannot activate using any key. I reproduced the issue using
> a windows XP VM built by itself on my windows 7 PC and brought into the sanbox
> environment and the issue did not occur.
>
> So the XP mode VM cannot be moved to another system. Interesting...

Because Windows before version 7 didn't include a separate license for the
guest OS. It has always been the case that if you installed Windows in a
guest OS that you had to have a license for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XP_Mode#Windows_XP_Mode
"Windows XP Mode (XPM)[12] is a virtual machine package for Windows Virtual
PC containing a pre-installed, licensed copy of Windows XP Professional SP3
as its guest OS."

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...e-in-windows-7
"Make sure you're running Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate."
"To use Windows XP Mode, you need to download and install Windows XP Mode,
which is a fully licensed version of Windows XP with Service Pack 3."

Microsoft isn't gifting to you a second separate license of Windows XP
beyond its use as an extended compatibility mode inside of Windows 7. In
fact, this embedded virtualization gives them freedom when moving forward in
later versions of not having to make the new OS as backward compatible. The
compatibility is handled by the VM.

Windows 7's XP Mode requires Windows VPC whose virtual hardware smoothly
activates during installation (the guest's OEM license matches the
underlying hardware). Loading XP Mode under other virtualization software
means the OEM key becomes "unauthorized" and why you need to activate.

I've heard the product key for the guest OS is in a KEY.TXT file that comes
with XP Mode. If that exists, try it. I found the following thread in a
forum with a post from Liu Meng saying activation can be accomplished via a
registry key. Use at your own risk.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...f-1241217ce0d3