Hi FreeStyler, Nice post, hopefully it save the same old questions form coming up again and again. Should also be handy when Hyper-V 3 is released. As I'm sure you know, I use method 1 as it also allows for SLP v1 activation (not sure about the others) Maybe you add that info for each of the methods.
Yeah, I tried adding the SPL strings to the reg. It worked fine for HP's and Acer's I think. But it never worked with Dell's, something to do with the address where the DMI info is stored? Anyway, about 80% of the PC's we worked on were Dell's So I was always making and deploying Dell images. p.s. Thanks for adding the info.
What kind of Dell guest OS'es we are talking about? Server 2003 Or XP? It should work for Windows 2003 as 'f000,0000,ffff,Dell System' would be in the correct memory range when using 'BiosLockString' property Hyper-V also includes the magical 'MS_VM_CERT/SHA1/9b80ca0d5dd061ec9da4e494f4c3fd1196270c22' SLP string that should activate Windows Server 2003 systems when used with Server 2003 R2 Oembios files
Sebus is right All Server 2003 versions activated fine with any of the R2 Oembios sets, in both Virtual Server and Hyper-V. It was XP that used to give me all the headaches, when we moved over to Server 2008 with Hyper-V. Fortunately all the work arounds, also worked for my own Hyper-V Server.