I have a full purchased copy of Windows XP from Microsoft that I was using on
a real PC. That PC is now gone and I have purchased a new Intel iMac. I
have installed Windows XP in a dual boot mode using Apple's Boot Camp and
activation works fine.

I purchased a copy of VMware's Fusion for the Mac and what I'm doing is
using this product to virtualize the partition that Boot Camp uses. I'm not
installing Windows XP twice. I can either start the partition using Boot
Camp or I can start the same partition using VMware Fusion while my Mac is
running.

The problem is that VMware implements its own hardware so Windows thinks
it's on a new machine. So if I activate it in Fusion that works but when I
go back to Boot Camp it fails. In the end I'm running one copy of Windows,
on the same piece of hardware but being started/booted up by one of two
technologies. I don't see how I'm breaking any license agreements with this
but I'm being penalized with this ridiculous activation cycle. Any thoughts?

Macnlos wrote:

> I have a full purchased copy of Windows XP from Microsoft that I was using on
> a real PC. That PC is now gone and I have purchased a new Intel iMac. I
> have installed Windows XP in a dual boot mode using Apple's Boot Camp and
> activation works fine.
>
> I purchased a copy of VMware's Fusion for the Mac and what I'm doing is
> using this product to virtualize the partition that Boot Camp uses. I'm not
> installing Windows XP twice. I can either start the partition using Boot
> Camp or I can start the same partition using VMware Fusion while my Mac is
> running.
>
> The problem is that VMware implements its own hardware so Windows thinks
> it's on a new machine. So if I activate it in Fusion that works but when I
> go back to Boot Camp it fails. In the end I'm running one copy of Windows,
> on the same piece of hardware but being started/booted up by one of two
> technologies. I don't see how I'm breaking any license agreements with this
> but I'm being penalized with this ridiculous activation cycle. Any thoughts?


Discussed in the past. Boot Camp and VMWare sould be treated as two machines.
IIRC, the EULA is based on the number of computers, real or virtual or both.
And, yes, it is ridiculous but the EULA is not based on users/utilization.

"GHalleck" wrote:

> Discussed in the past. Boot Camp and VMWare sould be treated as two machines.
> IIRC, the EULA is based on the number of computers, real or virtual or both.
> And, yes, it is ridiculous but the EULA is not based on users/utilization.
>

I found the answer from the VMware folks on their discussions. Here is
the correct recipe and in the correct order to get this working. Once
again, we are only installing Windows XP once and on one machine. The
difference is whether I start this installation running on the bare metal
or with VMware as a real drive image.

These steps must be followed in order:

1) Create the boot camp partition and install Windows XP.
2) Start up Windows XP with Boot Camp and validate.
3) Do all your patching and updating.
4) Boot into OS X
5) Install VMware Fusion if its not installed already
6) Create a new image using the Boot Camp partition as the source
7) Startup Windows XP in VMware
8) Install VMware tools
9) Reboot the Windows XP in VMware
10) Validate Windows XP in VMware (this has to be after VMware tools is
installed and the image was rebooted).
11) Shutdown Windows XP in VMware
12) Shutdown OS X
13) Startup Windows XP using Boot Camp (bare metal)
14) Validate one last time if needed.

At this point you should be able to boot your single Windows XP
installation with either Boot Camp or VMware Fusion and it will validated.

Why would we do this? Using Boot Camp allows you to run Windows XP with
full access to all the hardware and it runs much faster, including games
and what not. The down side is you don't have access to OS X. In OS X
you can use VMware Fusion to run windows at the same time if you need to
access/share stuff.