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SvenGus
Expert
Expert

Boot Camp partition Vista wants to reactivate after upgrading VMware Tools

As the title says, after upgrading the VMware Tools to the latest version contained in Fusion 2.0.5 (i.e., VMwareTools-7.9.6-173382) in my Vista Boot Camp partition VM, then when I switch to native boot (that is, booting the Mac directly from the Vista Boot Camp partition) Windows is no more activated as it was before, but says that I have 3 days to activate it (in the Computer -> Properties window): is this normal?

I think that one shouldn't need to reactivate the "real" Boot Camp Vista only after a simple Tools update: what significant hardware changes could there be to trigger this?

If this is normal, then one would use up all the 10 activations in just some months: totally unacceptable, considering that before upgrading the Tools the switch from VM to native boot and vice versa worked perfectly, with Windows remaining activated on both fronts.

Sadly, Vista, AFAIK, doesn't have an activation clearinghouse like XP, where the activation status is reset every 120 days: so if one uses up all the 10 (?) Vista activations, it's time to call Microsoft or to buy another copy, which, again, is rather unacceptable for an otherwise excellent product like Fusion.

Is all this expected behaviour, or should I retry the update again (I have a Winclone backup with the latest native activated status)...?

Thank you in advance for any help...

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SvenGus
Expert
Expert

So, I repeatedly tried to uninstall and reinstall the Tools, rebooting several times, etc. etc.: to no avail - Vista still wanted to reactivate while booted natively.

In the meantime, I have restored a working Vista Home Premium SP2 Boot Camp partition with the old 2.0.4 Tools: this works perfectly, with activation retained between VM and native reboots; to prevent the Tools from automatically updating to the 2.0.5 version, I changed the relative entry in the Boot Camp partition .vmx from tools.upgrade.policy = "upgradeAtPowerCycle"[/i] to tools.upgrade.policy = "manual"[/i].

(Regarding activation limits and so on, I'm pretty sure that with XP you can activate on substantially different hardware up to 4 times a year, while the activation status is reset every 4 months (120 days); but I'm not sure how this works in Vista: for example, I had to re-buy a Vista SP1 DVD because the previous RTM DVD had used up all its activations; and this only after having been used with VMware Fusion as a Boot Camp partition VM (I simply had reactivated whenever asked to): so obviously I would like to avoid unnecessarily using up all my activations with the currrent DVD too early. Probably, anyway, there must be something true with the maximum of globally 10 activations limit for Vista: quite differently from XP.)

Well, it looks like this forced reactivation situation is similar to that of some time ago (IIRC, there was a period when there always were 3 days to reactivate while rebooted natively, when Fusion was being developed to better manage this), or now with Windows 7: rather strange regression (or whatever it is), anyway...

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taiwuchiang
Contributor
Contributor

I am having the same problem with activation of my Vista after I upgraded to Fusion 2.0.5. I need 2.0.5 because I need to use Ubuntu 9.04 which only got supported by the latest 2.0.5. Anyone has a solution other than downgrade to 2.04?

Thanks,

Taiwu

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WoodyZ
Immortal
Immortal

I am having the same problem with activation of my Vista after I upgraded to Fusion 2.0.5. I need 2.0.5 because I need to use Ubuntu 9.04 which only got supported by the latest 2.0.5. Anyone has a solution other than downgrade to 2.04?

Just use Fusion 2.0.4 and the script from .

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