Error 0xC004E002 - Vista activation problem - and can not install VMWare Tools...

[tsguru]

Hi,

I've been searching around the forums here and the Internet and trying various things but I can't get things to work properly. Here is my situation:

Mac Book Pro OS X 10.5.1

Vista Home Premium on Boot Camp partition

Everything was working OK for a few days with the trial license on Fusion 1.1 that I d/l from the Internet. I did have some activation problems initially but I got MS to activate via phone and I thought I had the bootcamp and fusion working ok.

I received my CD copy of fusion in the mail - I entered in my purchased license info.

Now I am having this error come up in Vista when I am in Fusion

An error has occurred code 0xC004E002

Description: The software licensing service reported that the license store contains inconsistent data. You should contact MS by phone to help resolve this problem.

And, it seems like the VMWare Tools are not installed and when I select Install tools - it doesn't seem to do anything. When I reboot back into BootCamp, it says I am activated but it has also said that my copy of Windows Vista is not genuine. If I go to the WGA site - it eventually then says it is genuine in BC. Also, in BootCamp - it looks like the VMWare tools are installed.

Can anyone provide a solution to get Fusion 1.1 running with Vista Home premium and stay activated under BootCamp and fusion.

Thanks for any assistance or direction anyone can provide.

Tony V.

[tsguru]

Bump!

Anybody here? No response? I thought this was where I could turn to get some help from VMWare people?

I've got an inquiry in with MS too - and no joy there either.

TIA if anyone can help.

Tony

[admin]

VMware definitely can't help you with WGA: that's between you and Microsoft. The last time I heard, though, our friends at Microsoft had decided to forbid, via the license agreement, the use of Vista Home and Vista Home Premium in a virtual machine.

Maybe they are enforcing this though activation?

In part due to Microsoft's stance, Vista Home and Vista Home Premium are not on VMware's list of officially supported guest operating systems inside Fusion VMs:

In general with Vista and XP, you should expect to have to activate exactly twice: once while Windows is running as a Fusion 1.1 VM and once while it is running natively, having been booted into with Boot Camp.

Regarding your VMware Tools problem: when you pick Virtual Machine -> Install VMware Tools from the Fusion menu, what you are really doing is presenting a fake CD-ROM to the virtual machine. This fake CD-ROM contains the Tools installer, and it should "autorun" in any Windows VM set up to permit CD autoruns. If it doesn't, you can navigate to "My Computer" after choosing Install VMware Tools, and open up the (fake) CD manually to launch the installer.

Message was edited by: brianriceca to fix weird formatting

[tsguru]

Thanks for this info. If I could know for sure this was the case, I would just upgrade to the next level of Vista that would allow it and solve the problem by paying the man!

I will follow up with MS and see if the upgrade option is viable.

If anyone else could attest to this either being the issue or can verify that a business or ultimate version can be run in BootCamp and Fusion I would appreciate it.

Thanks again,

Tony

[tsguru]

I was able to get this somewhat working without having to further pursue with MS - they basically blew me off in their support forums. I understand that Vista Home Premium may not be supported by VMWare - but it seems like I can get it to run in Fusion from the BootCamp partition and be both activated and genuine in both BootCamp and Fusion as long as I do not install the VMWare Tools. Once I install the tools and reboot - it leads to the error message above. Going back into BootCamp (I am still activated in BC), removing the tools by uninstalling the app from control panel, visiting the WGA website and making myself "genuine" again, back to OS X - and then good to go with Fusion. Hopefully, - I need to see it survive a few more reboots to be 100% sure.

I am not against paying the additional $159 to M$ to upgrade my Home Premium to Vista ultimate as long as I knew that this was the problem and that was the fix. I don't want to go for the Ultimate upgrade just to wind up "ultimately screwed" out of the additional $.

Could VMWare or another community member with Vista Home Premium confirm the behavior I am seeing and this error message with the tools and Fusion 1.1 build 62573?

So my current question - Do I really need the VMWare tools? Are they just nice to have features like the shared folders and possibly higher screen resolution? I seem to be working OK, I can run the programs I need in Windows, my hardware is working (2nd monitor mirrored, BT mouse and keyboard USB etc..., I'm activated, genuine, etc..,

Will not having the Tools installed eventually cause me some problems?

Thanks in advance for any additional info others can provide.

Tony

[admin]

Could VMWare or another community member with Vista Home Premium confirm the behavior I am seeing and this error message with the tools and Fusion 1.1 build 62573?

No idea about Vista Home, sorry.

So my current question - Do I really need the VMWare tools? Are they just nice to have features like the shared folders and possibly higher screen resolution? I seem to be working OK, I can run the programs I need in Windows, my hardware is working (2nd monitor mirrored, BT mouse and keyboard USB etc..., I'm activated, genuine, etc..,

Will not having the Tools installed eventually cause me some problems?

You do not need tools installed, it's just for convenience (shared folders, drag-and-drop, dynamic screen resizing, mouse movement, etc.)