This is a pre-WGA version of Windows XP (Unlike Vista, XP doesn't have WGA built in, it's an addon), so it's not a matter of "Authorization", it's a matter of getting the VM setup right, if that's possible.

Craig White wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-01-13 at 12:21 -0700, Joseph Sinclair wrote:
>> All,
>>   Knowing that some of you are far more experienced with running things in a VM than I am, I would like to know if any of you have ideas for the following scenario:
>>
>>   I have a family member who is running Windows XP and the box it's on is dying fast.  Rather than buy a new
>> Windows box and attempt to, maybe, migrate everything, my thought is to take a full disk backup of the Windows
>> machine and load that into a Virtual Machine on one of my Linux systems.  This, however spawns a few questions:
>> 1) Is it possible to load a live Windows system backup into a fresh VM on a different machine like this and have it actually work?
>>   a) Is there a specific way I should take the backup to ensure an easier transition?
>>   b) Which VM software would be the best choice for this?
>>   c) Does anyone have any other suggestions to help make this as smooth as possible?
> ----
> I have no first hand knowledge of running WinXP on VM of any type.
> 
> I have enough knowledge of WinXP to know that a hardware signature is
> computed during installation and this information is fed back to
> Microsoft when that particular installation code is 'authorized'. Once
> authorized, you can replace many individual elements such as the hard
> drive, but once the motherboard is factored, the 'authorized' copy
> cannot be moved to any other motherboard without authorization including
> situations where the motherboard dies and is replaced with an identical
> copy.
> 
> This isn't an issue with the 'oem' versions that are attached to a
> computer because the computer itself has the authorization which permits
> a company such as Dell to replace a defective motherboard but those
> Windows XP versions aren't available to the general public.
> 
> Thus, I would expect that if you migrate the current working version of
> Windows XP from the computer that was authorized to a VM run on
> different hardware, Windows will detect this at startup and go into
> unauthorized mode.
> 
> Craig
> 
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