So, for fun I created a cracked win 7 under ESXi... generated a genuine ticket, and am spinning up a win 10 vm now. I am not 100% how this works as far as hardware goes, but theoretically this should validate my win 10 VM if I understand correct. It is a different VM all together, so the "initial conditions" of the VM are different which is where I am not sure if it matters. We shall see! Happy to report; it worked! Thanks a bunch Enthousiast!
The problem with Windows 7 to Windows 10 upgrade (either from direct upgrade or genuine ticket + clean install) is that with newer machines, Windows 7 won't even detect the media, or will install but won't have drivers for most (if not all) of the hardware, sometimes you don't even get keyboard/mouse support. For now the solution for those situations (until Windows 8.1 becomes also obsolete in driver support) is Windows 8.1 KMS to Windows 10 v1511 upgrade then a clean install with the latest Windows 10 build. You need Windows 10 v1511 because newer builds don't support upgrade from Windows 8.1 activated with KMS.
On VMs, the ticket should have only worked on the original VM it was created on, but for over 2 years all my fresh VMWare VM's get HWID activated by default.
Yea. I ran into this issue. I tried it on my test bench, but couldn’t get mouse or keyboard working to instal win7. That’s what drove me to spin up a vm and try it there. Honestly, probably faster and easier anyways lol. Thanks for the win 8.1 advice tho! I’ll have to find myself a 1511 iso just to have in hand. Yea, very interesting! But can’t really complain, I’m happy this worked lol.
From what I have found/seen as it relates to VMware Guest VMs HWID, the HWID activation is tied to the "uuid.bios" value stored in the .vmx config file for a given vmware guest. I have recycled the same uuid for several win10 vms without any activation issues. However I have not tested this in the last 6 months or so. But have about 5 guest vms running using the same uuid. Might also be worth noting that only one of these guests are running a time. Im not sure if the HWID includes anything from or about the MAC of the NIC on the machine as that is prone to change more than once over time (usb nic,wifi etc..). Just my .02 cents! ~MC
Yeah i know. In the past i had to copy the uuid and, iirc, another line from the vmx file. But for 2 years now i can create any new VM and as long as i apply the correct key (non home/pro (N)), it switches to hwid activation. For me this was not handy, when testing stuff in the past
Thank you for sharing this information, it works! I tried it with build 1511. The first time I copied the GenuineTicket.xml that file was deleted at re-starting the computer. But, I copied it again, re-started, made sure it was still there and then connected to the internet and Windows was activated.