VMWARE Fusion & Windows 8 Pro

[Komentra]

Hello. Mac user here and I purchased a legit copy of Windows 8 and installed it on a Boot Camp partition and whenever I boot into Windows 8 it's fine and activated as it should.

However whenever I use VMWare Fusion to open my Windows 8 partition in a virtual machine Windows 8 is not activated and when I go to look at the cd-key it's completely different than the cd-key that I own. I try putting in my cd-key but it doesn't work.

I'm completely baffled by this and don't understand why this is? Running the latest version of Fusion.

[avanish321]

This is a known issue in any virtualization application.

Try out this article

Note : this works for all versions of windows till windows 7.  In general the method should apply for windows 8 too.   The article does not confirm the fix on windows 8 vm which is based on boot camp.

[scottthedba]

Hi, I also have this issue and the Wndows 7 fix does not work on Windows 8.

For my installation, I had a working Windows 7 ultimate installation in boot camp which I could access using either VMWare Fusion 5.0.1 or by booting direct. The fix you suggest worked fine for that.

I then paid for a commercial upgrade when Windows 8 came out and upgraded my VM to Windows 8 Pro who ch although slow worked without issue. Now when I try to boot my mac straight into Windows, I get the authentication error claiming that I have hit the license limit for the key I have purchased.

This makes sense, but is this going to mean that we can no longer make use of a single windows installation installed on a single mac in the way we used to with previous versions of windows? Is this something which VMWare can pursue with Microsoft please to get clarification as I doubt somehow they will provide a sensible answer to us mere end users.

many thanks,

Scott...

[avanish321]

Have you tried calling microsoft? Tell them that you are using windows 8 on the same system but have made some hardware changes and needed to reactivate windows 8. I dont think it will violate their eula since you are using it on only one computer .

try this number 1-888-725-1047

[jim_gill]

The way activation works in Windows 8, it's encrypted against the hardware signature of your computer. When you installed Windows into the Boot Camp partition, it activated against your Mac's hardware. That's fine and normal.

When you run the Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine, the hardware looks different to Windows and triggers a need for reactivation. Normally, you just press the button that says "Activate online now" and you're good to go. VMware Tools keeps track of the activation data for running in either native or virtual mode, and does what's necessary to keep Windows happy and activated. (In some situations, you need to reactivate one final time on your first boot back into native Boot Camp after activating under Fusion, but that's it.)

Has VMware Tools installed properly into the Boot Camp virtual machine? We've set it up to install automatically on the first boot as a VM, but if the installation didn't complete, that could cause the problems you're seeing. VMware Tools can be installed only while you're running as a VM, so restart the Boot Camp partition under Fusion and select Install (or Reinstall) VMware Tools from the Fusion menu.

If you have installed VMware Tools, it keeps a log of activation activity in the file c:\ProgramData\VMware\RawdskCompatibility\vmrawdsk.log. If you have that file and can post it in reply, I might be able to tell what's going wrong -- it contains no personal data, it's okay to attach it to a reply, or you can send me a private message.

[Komentra]

Thanks for the response jim.gill. I went ahead and reinstalled VMware tools but that didn't resolve the problem

So here's the information from that file you requested. http://pastebin.com/mhsVGzMd

I'm confused as to why the boot camp partition has a completely different cd-key. I tried entering mine but it says it's not valid but it is because I use it on my partition.