Has anyone used an OEM key successfully? Clearly the answer is yes as many posts on these forums verify.
I assume this is referring to Windows licenses. But which ones? Some licenses specifically denied permission for VMs. (Indeed I think some early vista retail licenses did if memory serves - tho subsequent licenses were more sane).
An OEM license is designed to be distributed with a new pc. Non transferable. Retail you can transfer the license/upgrade motherboard etc and not worry.
The main thrust of the OEM windows is that is is designed to be installed/provided with a pc and the license key locked to that pc. Some components you can replace, others (eg motherboards) can be more problematic.
It could in theory exist in a vm on that pc but the licenses I've seen (eg vista oem as in the link you provided) specifically say this is against the terms of use. So yes it will work but is against the terms of use as I understand it.
Originally, Vista Home was not allowed to be run as a virtual machine. I believe MS has reversed that so any version of Vista can be run as a virtual machine. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) But who would want to run Vista Home as a VM anyway? 😛
Short version - always get a retail license for MS software if it's going to be installed in a VM. With older os's eg xp it's very hard to get a retail license these days and oem may be the only available option. I can't see anything in the XP OEM EULA saying you can't use it in a VM - but I'm no legal expert.
AFAIK, versions of Windows prior to Vista had no specific wording regarding virtualization so no restrictions to running it in a VM, as virtualization was not as common as it is now, so MS would have been concerned about it at the end user level. And since MS changed the EULA to allow Vista to run as a VM, there is no restriction for current versions of Windows either. Of course, MS still limits support for certain things that are run in a virtual machine, but this is mostly for server apps such as Exchange and SQL, but Windows itself can be run as a VM.
Windows 7 Prof - as I understand includes the ability to run XP inside MS virtualization on a suitable PC. I don't know how it activates. Is there a way of buying Windows 7 and extracting the XP key to provide a legit way of running XP under fusion?
What you're referring to is "XP Mode", which is only available to Windows 7 Pro, Ultimate or Enterprise and only for the 64-bit versions. Legally, that copy of Windows XP provided is only allowed to run as VM within Windows 7's XP mode, so trying to run it as VM within Fusion would be just as illegal as some of the other discussions of OEM licenses already mentioned in this thread. So since the point of the discussion is legal ways to run Windows as VM, then extracting the XP Mode VM to run within Fusion is a moot point.
