Most likely your problem is because it is installing into VMWare dude. I know from experience that systems in VMWare do not detect your real bios or even your hardware. Try installing a video driver and see what happens. This same scenario happens with your bios because the virtual system cannot interact with your bios therefor cannot detect the slic in your bios either. Install the same way only on your real computer, NOT VMWARE and see what happens. It should be fine after that. If worse comes to worse you can always install a loader as well. BTW loaders still work in VMWare invironments, I have personally tested Daz's loader and Hazar's Loader, even that Extreme edition, all worked. Good luck man.
Yes, I think its VMWare that is the problem. I was actually hoping to try out circumventing this new protection in a virtual machine before I mod my BIOS since I'm a bit scared of bricking it.
Take 15 minutes to read up on your motherboards BIOS. How to flash, the order things happen in, the signs it makes on success or failure, and most importantly how to recover. Make your BIOS Recovery Disc/USB/CD/whatever (make two, one with the modded BIOS and one with a clean BIOS) and make sure you have everything you need before you start. When you flash your BIOS, pay attention to the sounds the computer makes makes (beeps, floppy/CD reads, etc) and give it time. IF it fails, try to recover with the modded BIOS first, then if it still doesn't work, use your clean BIOS. Recovering with the modded BIOS might work where the 'normal' flash failed for whatever reason, and could save you the trouble of trying to re-flash the modded BIOS later. One of the biggest problems I've seen with people trying to flash their BIOS' (both clean and modded), is they get impatient and don't let it do it's job. When I flashed my BIOS, it actually "failed" almost instantly, then retried and flashed successfully after a few minutes. Flashing your BIOS isn't very difficult, and not very dangerous as long as you take the steps to make sure you can recover and are using the right tools and BIOS.
if you are using a modded VMWare file with a slic inserted activation should work fine. Those vmware files only have SLP 1.0 and SLIC 2.0 not SLIC 2.1 needed for activation. You need to check the VM with something like everest ultimate edition or rw-everything that will show you if you have a 2.1 SLIC in it.
Thanks for pointing this out as this seems to be exactly my problem! I ran SLIC Dump Toolkit and it reported SLIC 2.0. Do you perhaps know where I can get an updated BIOS file for VMWare that includes SLIC 2.1?
VMWare can detect the host machine's BIOS. You have to open up the virtual disks' .vmx file in notepad and add the following line: Code: SMBIOS.reflectHost = "TRUE" Of course, the host machine will still have to have SLIC 2.1