vcenter 5.0 on windows server 2008 r2 license became 'not genuine'

[umarzuki]

chronology of what had been done prior this issue

1. create a new vm
2. copy and paste vmdk file of a vcenter 5.0 (windows 2008 r2)
3. power on vm
4. set IP same as original vcenter
5. successfully activate windows licens
6. migrate vcenter to another esxi server

what would suddenly cause this?

[Wscholz]

Has the target esxi server another processor type than the source esx server ?

Have you tried reactivating the os via phone activation ? You could do that via an elevated command prompt and typing

slui.exe 4

[umarzuki]

hardware on both esxi are identical

not yet, before this I was told the same thing happened to other windows VM but after a few restarts it got genuine again.

[Wscholz]

To be honest it´s a very strange issue. I´ve seen that for example also on a windows 7 vm which get´s deployed from a template. In that case the phone activation helped. But i´ve also seen that happening where nothing helped but a repair install, in none of the cases i´ve seen or gettin a real explanation why that happened.

Do you see errors if you type:

slmgr.vbs /dlv

If restarting a few times does not help you could also try the following :

Backup the VM first

Run a chkdsk on the C: drive

chkdsk C: /R

After that run a software protections scan via:

sfc /scannow

After that you could check %WinDir% \Logs\CBS\CBS.log if there are any errors.

If you don´t find any errors at that point i guess you have to do a repair install.