Some time ago my friend told me that some OEM guys managed to move a VHD with KMS-activated win8 to another mahine and the win8 remains activated. A bit later he told me another story, those guys managed to use the spp datas of a KMS-activated win8 to make another win8 on a different machine to become activated - I don't know if he had told me everything about the trick, so, if some guys are interested, you could try it out and see if it would work.
Hep hey I would like to give it a shoot, but my machine is phone activated, so i can't try this, unless someone could upload the ssp folder from a KMS-activated win8. Anyone who would like to do that? Cheers all
Even if someone uploads the spp folder, the HDD driver spec of his machine has to be the same as yours.
Better to play it safe first: all the specs. As we all know, updating a HDD driver would de-activate, so if it works for everything identical, then we could try out further.
I thought you said i only have to change the harddisk volume serial. FaiKee wrote "Better to play it safe first: all the specs. As we all know, updating a HDD driver would de-activate, so if it works for everything identical, then we could try out further." Ok i understand
hm, if any member kms activated on a currently available sata hdd that is real cheap, it could put w8 out of business, if it works.. i would rather pay for a cheap hdd, than for a m$ licence any day and twice on sundays..
I know exactly how to activate multiple virtual machines, but real hardware is a different story at the moment. Save this as a vbs file and run it on the activated system. If you then run it on the system you're trying to activate and the UUID is different then you won't pass as genuine. Code: strComputer = "." Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2") Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystemProduct") For Each objItem in colItems Wscript.Echo objItem.UUID Next
Even if it works, it's only for 180 days, MS is giving out Ent. Evals free until next Aug. + 90 days.......no, I don't think it would make them out of business. Maybe those OEM guys has to do something more, I don't know, what's interesting was I also saw on PCBeta a guy said he could use the spp files to activate another win8 on another machine, and he will upload the necessary files...... and then boom! Everything in PCBeta about activation were all taken down.
Won't work even on two so called identical machines MAC addresses are different OEM is different thing altogether as regards to activation.
With to much time on my hands today, I decided to test this with VMware on 3 kms activated installations. I know this worked before with OEM activated Windows 7, Server 2008r2, Vista, Server 2008, Xp and server 2003. Here is what I did and the results. Virtual Machines all previously activated and created in Windows 7 with vmware workstation 8.04 Windows 8 Enterprise X64 Windows 8 Pro x32 Windows Server 2012 Then I did clean install of Windows 8 Ent x64 Eval on two identical machines (same mainboard, processor, Ram, case, and cpu) Intel core two duo 3.0, 8gb ram, 22in monitors, and mainboard Asus p5q pro. NOTE: one of these two machines was used to create the original virtual machines with windows 7 and VMware workstation 8.04. Installed vmware workstation 9, Copied virtual machines to the 2 computers. Started each, clicked I moved it when prompted, and checked activation. All three virtual machines, on both computers, were still activated. Then stopped the machines and in vmware, I updated all hardware to version 9 and restarted. All three machines on both computers were still activated. Did windows update and all three on both computers updated successfully and after several restarts remained activated. Then I decided to check on two machines with different host hardware. 1. WINDOWS 7 Home Basic X64, Intel Celeron 2.6, 4gb Ram, 40in lcd, and main board Asus P5G41T-M LX. Installed vmware workstation 9, Copied virtual machines to the computer. The virtual machine windows 8 Ent X64 I had to reduce the ram from 4gb to 2 gb. Started each, clicked I moved it when prompted, and checked activation. All three virtual machines were still activated. Then stopped the machines and in vmware, I updated all hardware to version 9 by clicking the link under edit virtual machine settings and choosing change on this machine and restarted. All three machines were still activated. Did windows update and all three updated successfully and after several restarts remained activated. 2. Windows Server 2008r2 with AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.6, 16gb Ram, 17in monitor, and mainboard Asus M5A88-M. Installed vmware workstation 9, Copied virtual machines to the computer. Started each, clicked I moved it when prompted, and checked activation. All three virtual machines were still activated. Then stopped the machines and in vmware, I updated all hardware to version 9 and restarted. All three machines on both computers were still activated. Did windows update and all three on both computers updated successfully and after several restarts remained activated. I don't know if it's any use or not, but here it is. Tomorrow I may also have too much time so I might try converting these to VHDs and see if they run on hyper-v and remain activated.
Tks for all the tests, it's encouraging. btw, I read in the "backup/restore thread" that some guys didn't get their activation back, my guess is that maybe when they try to re-install, they formated the drive, and this could lead to change of volume serial. My suggestion therefore is that if you backup, also backup the volume serial, and check that it is the same when re-installing.
Converting to vhd and trying to run on Hyper-v did not work. It was un activated. So everything must be tied to HD IDs, as previously stated, not other hardware.
That's the only reason it worked in your tests, as it's the same VM. What I did in my tests was create fresh virtual machines on different hardware and then applied backed up activation files from the original VM. I successfully activated all of the VM's because of what I mentioned earlier in the thread, the UUID. Apply the same UUID and backed up activation files to a virtual machine and you should get "genuine" status. EDIT: Just use VirtualBox and open your virtual machines .vbox file and you can edit the "Machine uuid" as well as the "HardDisk uuid" (if needed).
Any complications running the same UUID on multiple hdd's at the same time, can you have both machines up and running without any virtual collisions
As it's only for virtual machines then you can only apply it onto one OS per system, at least with VirtualBox. If you try to use the same UUID on multiple VM's then VirtualBox won't display more than one. I don't know if VMware is any different.