Windows 10: Copying QEMU VM's to new machine(s) don't require re-activation

Hi folks one of the advantages of using KVM/QEMU's paravirtualisation drivers is that apart from the CPU Windows thinks it's running on an identical machine irrespective of the actual hardware so won't ask you to re-activate again (Office also doesn't ask for activation either). (Of course if you pass thru a load of real devices then that's another story). What you have to do is ensure that the Windows was installed on a virtio HDD and the NIC, video, etc all uses the virtio drivers. Do though respect the EULA --ONLY ONE copy of Windows allowed for that particular license so only run it on ONE machine and close down if running on another. I do find this useful though when testing different Windows builds without always having to bother about re-activating stuff because I'm moving them between computers often with quite different Host hardware. Ms please alter your licensing so it's easier for people to do decent testing in home / small business computer lab setups. Cheers jimbo

:)

 

Copying QEMU VM's to new machine(s) don't require re-activation

Hi folks

one of the advantages of using KVM/QEMU's paravirtualisation drivers is that apart from the CPU Windows thinks it's running on an identical machine irrespective of the actual hardware so won't ask you to re-activate again (Office also doesn't ask for activation either).

(Of course if you pass thru a load of real devices then that's another story).

What you have to do is ensure that the Windows was installed on a virtio HDD and the NIC, video, etc all uses the virtio drivers.

Do though respect the EULA --ONLY ONE copy of Windows allowed for that particular license so only run it on ONE machine and close down if running on another.

I do find this useful though when testing different Windows builds without always having to bother about re-activating stuff because I'm moving them between computers often with quite different Host hardware.

Ms please alter your licensing so it's easier for people to do decent testing in home / small business computer lab setups.

Cheers
jimbo

 

qemu-kvm

virt-manager is the gui that can be used to do exactly this.

from the open source project:QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.

When used as a machine emulator, QEMU can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performance.

When used as a virtualizer, QEMU achieves near native performances by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. QEMU supports virtualization when executing under the Xen hypervisor or using the KVM kernel module in Linux. When using KVM, QEMU can virtualize x86, server and embedded PowerPC, and S390 guests.

 

qemu-kvm

i'm missing some kind of free gui based management thing for qemu-kvm that lets me do common VM tasks