VMWare made me Pirate software!

Before my laptop died I used the converter software from VMWare to convert it to a virtual machine thereby not losing all of my installed programs (most of which I actually paid for). Once I booted up the virtual machine I had to enter in the Windows serial number that's generally on the tag they slap on the bottom of the laptop. Not a big deal I thought.

I then, as VMWare suggested, installed the VMWare tools for better performance, cool anything that would help the performance right? Wrong! Soon as I booted up the VM again I had to enter the Windows serial again! Your hardware has substantially changed blah blah blah, please enter your serial number within 3 days.

Naturally I immediately went to my laptop turned it upside down and entered the serial number. Submitting it again to MS resulted in Too many activations for this serial number please use another.

WTF?!?!

Now I understand what they are trying to do and prevent someone from publishing serial numbers and everyone and their dog can get free activation. So naturally I just took the serial number from my wifes laptop and filed that little tidbit of info in the back of my head (and on my blog).

So word of caution, if you make a VM out of an existing Windows install you may run out of allowable activations. What I haven't figured out is if it is possible to install the tools when the machine is running and without being logged into the VM.

By the way the VMtools greatly improve graphics performance and quality!