Cloned a WIN XP Pro and moved it to a External hard drive and now it is requesting that the OS be activated again, help.....

[Ironspidey]

I have a Dell D820 and I have created several VM's by cloning the original. Since I do work at the office and at home all I want to do is place these 4 VMs on a external hard drive and access them this way. When I do this and I start up the VM on the external drive, XP says it needs to be reactivated again. Is there any way around this? I would like to just carry my external drive around and have it work with out activating it several times.

Any help would be apprecaited.

[G_T]

Download VMware Player to your external hard drive too. VMware Player is free software that enables you to easily run any virtual machine on a Windows or Linux PC. VMware Player runs virtual machines created by VMware Workstation, GSX Server or ESX Server.

[Ironspidey]

Why would moving the VMWare player to the external hard drive change the way the VM starts?

I made a clone and then copied the whole directory to my external hard drive. Then I started VM Player on my laptop and it asked if I moved it or copied it.

Is there a better way to do this so that it doesn't request that?

[kjb007]

If you are using an OEM install and any hardware changes, which will happen if you select copy, then you will be asked to re-activate. Otherwise, as long as the virtual hardware stays the same, you should not have to re-activate after the initial creation.

-KjB

[jamieorth]

Call MIcrosoft Activation Center - tell them you are moving to new hardware, they generally will reactivate for you. Of course, if this was an OEM that is not legal (but it still works)... Not that I condone this of couse...

Regards...

Jamie

Remember, if it's not one thing, it's your mother...