Royalty OEM Key - No Activation

[Ascii2]

I have read that with a Royalty OEM key a Windows XP operating system may be installed without being bothered to activate.

Having a Royalty OEM key,

I have tried using a Windows XP Professional Royalty OEM key (using VMWare) on

installations of Windows XP Professional (OEM) with both Windows XP Professional Generic OEM Microsoft Product Code and Windows XP Professional Royalty OEM Microsoft Product Code. For both tests Windows prompted for activation.

How can OEM Windows XP Professional be installed with a Royality OEM key and not have the burden of (re)activation.

Edited January 2, 2007 by Ascii2

[jbm]

Its tied to the BIOS on the motherboard. Meaning it will only activate on

the computer it came with or perhaps a similar one from the same manufacturer.

Edited January 2, 2007 by jbm

[Ascii2]

So Windows checks BIOS for something (I would guess some kind of of an identifier) and if certain information is returned, producted is activated. Is this correct.

What form the BIOS is returned to Windows?

I probably would not be able to sucessfully test using VMWare.

[Sonic]

If I remember, VmWare can redirect DMI Table of original motherboard BIOS of host system to virtual machine.

So you can test OEM activation feature.

[uid0]

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=82638&hl=

I've not tried it with vmware, but it works on real hardware

[Ascii2]

If I remember, VmWare can redirect DMI Table of original motherboard BIOS of host system to virtual machine.

So you can test OEM activation feature.

I cannot find an option to pass the BIOS information for VMware.

I am using VMware Workstation 5.5.3 build-34685.

[Ascii2]

If I remember, VmWare can redirect DMI Table of original motherboard BIOS of host system to virtual machine.

So you can test OEM activation feature.

Very interesting. I shall look into this tool.

[Sonic]

Edit your .vmx file in notepad and add or edit

SMBIOS.reflectHost = TRUE

Full thread on forum http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?s=&amp...st&p=597316

[Ascii2]

Thanks, I added "SMBIOS.reflectHost = TRUE" to my vmx file.

If OEM Windows XP Professional had been installed and not activated nor activation intetionally modified prior to making the change to vmx file, would Windows, after making the change to the vmx file, prompt to activate?

[uid0]

use %systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a

to check if it's activated

[Ascii2]

use %systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a

to check if it's activated

Product does not appear to be activated; Activation Wizard appears.

I have installed OEM Windows XP Professional on a new virtual machine with "SMBIOS.reflectHost = TRUE", but am still prompted for activation.

[Bezalel]

use %systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a

to check if it's activated

Product does not appear to be activated; Activation Wizard appears.

I have installed OEM Windows XP Professional on a new virtual machine with "SMBIOS.reflectHost = TRUE", but am still prompted for activation.

This method is not gauranteed. The only information transferred from the host is the System Manufacturer and the System Model. What is the CRC32 hash of your oembios.cat file?

[Ascii2]

What is the CRC32 hash of your oembios.cat file?

I do not know.

How would I acquire that information?

[severach]

The Royalty key alone is useless because it can never be activated. It must be paired with the set of OEMBIOS files that matches your Royalty OEM computer which makes the key preactivate. This won't work for a build-your-own system.

[Ascii2]

The test system was a Gateway computer.