@ccypruss000 You need to emulate a spesific (or close enough) computer type to use these restore images floating around. To quote my self with an example https://forums.mydigitallife.net/th...scs-on-vmware-workstation.82908/#post-1638404 Your images from archive.org > Compaq Evo Notebook N1050v with CPU Intel Pentium 4-M (Socket 478) VMware will not help you (maybe you can do some sorcery in VirtualBox for these spesific images) 86box most likely not support socket 478 and PCem is behind 86box atm... And to point out: restore images with Windows XP Home SP1 and old drivers (and maybe some minor bloatware) is not really worth the effort. (just my personal opinion)
So, my friend, which emulate do you recommend for this job that is close to the hardware of the particular laptop?
Hi all, I'm searching for ways to activate a Windows 10 VMware VM. This VM started as a regular Windows 7 Pro installation directly on the host (ie, not a VM, but the physical machine), until I finally moved to Linux. Then I started using the same install in VMware under Linux, on the same machine, a DELL Precision M6600. First, I had problems with activation when running the VM, but then I added: Code: acpi.passthru.slic = "TRUE" acpi.passthru.slicvendor = "TRUE" SMBIOS.reflecthost = "TRUE" to the .vmx file of the VM. After this, Windows became activated. Then I upgraded (ie. not a clean install) the VM to Windows 10 using the free installation media creator from Microsoft's web site. Windows remained activated. Then I moved the VM to a Lenovo ThinkPad. As you would expect, Windows was no longer activated. So, I started to look for a solution, and I found this forum and this thread. I followed the instructions from pantagruel in this thread. In other words, I commented out the lines cited above from the .vmx file, and I added the following: Code: bios440.filename = "WORKSTATION_17.0.1_DELL2.6_SLIC_BIOS.440.ROM" Of course, I also copied the .ROM file to the same directory as the .vmx. However, Windows did not activate. What might be the problem? Maybe I have to copy the SLIC from the DELL Precision machine and patch it into the .ROM?
@DOStiger Consumer editions of Windows NT 6.2 and beyond (aka Windows 8, 8.1, 10, and 11) don't use OEM:SLP activation, hence SLIC modding isn't feasible in your use case. Since this is a VM, opt for KMS activation, which will cut down the dependency of ACPI table passthrough from the host just for the sake of activation. You can use HWID and KMS38 as well for portability, but we don't officially support them here.
OK, but if that is true, why does the VMware SLIC pass-thru work on the original hardware? I used the KMS AIO successfully. Thanks for making the information and the tools available!
Because you were using Windows 7 when you upgraded to Windows 10, you got HWID activation tied to your passed-thru SLIC/hardware
I see. Hypothetically, what would it take to trick Windows 10 into thinking the hardware hasn't changed?
Not worth the hassle. Just use any of the methods available (KMS, KMS38, HwID), they don't need any preconditions to function.
Hey, I'm trying to somehow trick a VM that "he's" a real machine and give some hardware information to it, like serial number, manufacturer, and others. The reason is becuase i'm experimenting with Active Directory and i need the VM to have a serial number for Active Directory to read, and more things i won't explain because it's too long of a story. My questions are: Can i do this just by editing "BIOS.440.ROM"? Is there anything else i need to do? or editing the rom would be enough? Can i trick the machine to "think" it's a real machine? Can i make it have a serial number readable to the OS? (within System Information in Windows 10). I'm trying to do this for a while now and since i didn't found any way to do this, i decided to post this here because this is the single post i've found (that is still active) about VMWare bios and modding it. I'm a newbie Sorry if i didn't explain very good, or my English is bad, and if this is not the right topic to post this in, i'm sorry for that too Any help would be appreciated, Thank you.
I'm not aware of anything in BIOS.440.ROM that could help you to 'trick the machine to "think" it's a real machine', sorry. I've seen this topic before, but I've never seen a solution.
Good afternoon, can anyone share the modified EFI64.ROM and EFI32.ROM for ESXi 6.5U3? I found only ESXi6.5U3_BIOS.440_DELL2.5_SLIC.ROM.
There's no problem modding them, but I think that as far as this mod goes (OEM Activation 2.x) UEFI boot is only supported for 64-bit editions of Vista, Windows 7 and Server (officially, anyway). If you do need the modded 32-bit roms let me know and I'll include them.