1

I am running a retail edition of Windows 7 as a guest OS in VirtualBox.

Windows 7 activation is sensitive to hardware changes. In the case of a virtual machine, the hardware is mostly emulated.

In general, do minor updates to VirtualBox (i.e. upgrading from 4.3.x to 4.3.y) affect emulated hardware in a way that would cause the Windows 7 guest OS to require re-activation?

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

In my experience, as long as you don't change the VM's settings, minor upgrades don't force you to reactivate Windows. I've even done major version jumps (2.x to 4.x) without having to reactivate.

You might also want to have a look at this forum post on VirtualBox's forum. One poster writes:

With W7, you can change the MAC address and HD UUID (the UUID of the virtual hard drive file) and the CPU ID (boot the VM on a different computer, or replace your CPU) without triggering the reactivation. I have not looked at other options, like I/O APIC, PAE, SMP and all that. I don't have Hardware-V hardware, so I can't test those settings.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .