{"id":581,"date":"2014-03-24T06:42:57","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T13:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/?p=581"},"modified":"2014-03-24T06:42:57","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T13:42:57","slug":"virtualbox-and-windows-oem-guest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/virtualbox-and-windows-oem-guest\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtualbox and Windows OEM Guest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes you have a Window client sitting around running an important piece of software and the hardware is ancient. All you want to do is run this OS + critical application AS-IS and not risk the hardware failing. And yes you should upgrade, migrate whatever but that is just not in scope for you at the moment. Virtualization is ideal but Microsoft licensing might make it difficult. I am still unclear if it is legal or not to run an OEM Windows OS inside a virtual machine.<\/p>\n

If you have no other option and virtualization is the only choice this post might come in handy when you are bumping into Windows Activation issues and using Virtualbox. \u00a0I am sure other virtualization solutions have their own options to simulate BIOS configurations.<\/p>\n

You can play with simulating the PC BIOS (read further down). Or you can also try the SLIC ACPI table option.<\/p>\n

For my test the SLIC option worked.<\/p>\n

Using SLIC tables:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\r\n$ VBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/acpi\/0\/Config\/CustomTable" "\/tmp\/SLIC"\r\n<\/pre>\n
That worked!!<\/span><\/p>\n
Trying on a completely different Virtualbox host (different physical attributes).<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\r\n$ VBoxManage setextradata win7-vostro "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/acpi\/0\/Config\/CustomTable" "\/DATA\/VirtualBox\/Machines\/win7-vostro\/SLIC"\r\n<\/pre>\n
If you need to play with emulating your BIOS:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\r\n# dmidecode -t0\r\n# dmidecode 2.12\r\nSMBIOS 2.5 present.\r\n\r\nHandle 0x0001, DMI type 0, 24 bytes\r\nBIOS Information\r\nVendor: Dell Inc.\r\nVersion: A08\r\nRelease Date: 03\/05\/2010\r\nAddress: 0xE2480\r\nRuntime Size: 121728 bytes\r\nROM Size: 64 kB\r\nCharacteristics:\r\nISA is supported\r\nPCI is supported\r\nPC Card (PCMCIA) is supported\r\nPNP is supported\r\nBIOS is upgradeable\r\nBIOS shadowing is allowed\r\nESCD support is available\r\nBoot from CD is supported\r\nACPI is supported\r\nUSB legacy is supported\r\nAGP is supported\r\nBIOS boot specification is supported\r\nTargeted content distribution is supported\r\nBIOS Revision: 1.1\r\nFirmware Revision: 1.1\r\n\r\n# dmidecode -t1\r\n# dmidecode 2.12\r\nSMBIOS 2.5 present.\r\n\r\nHandle 0x0002, DMI type 1, 27 bytes\r\nSystem Information\r\nManufacturer: Dell Inc.\r\nProduct Name: Vostro 1520\r\nVersion: Null\r\nSerial Number: 30Z90M1\r\nUUID: 44454C4C-3000-105A-8039-B3C04F304D31\r\nWake-up Type: Power Switch\r\nSKU Number: Null\r\nFamily: Vostro\r\n<\/pre>\n
An example:<\/p>\n
\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSVendor" "Dell Inc."\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSVersion" "1.0.3"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSReleaseDate" "06\/20\/2008"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSReleaseMajor" 2\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSReleaseMinor" 1\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSFirmwareMajor" 2\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSFirmwareMinor" 1\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemVendor" "Dell Inc."\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemProduct" "Vostro 410"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemVersion" "<EMPTY>"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemSerial" "DJX9DH1"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemFamily" "86-based PC"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata WINXP2 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemUuid" "44454C4C-4A00-1058-8039-C4C04F444831"\r\n\r\n<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>I set mine as follow:<\/strong><\/span>\r\n[bash]\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSVendor" "Dell Inc."\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSVersion" "A08"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSReleaseDate" "03\/05\/2010"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSReleaseMajor" 1\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSReleaseMinor" 1\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSFirmwareMajor" 1\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiBIOSFirmwareMinor" 1\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemVendor" "Dell Inc."\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemProduct" "Vostro 1520"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemVersion" "<EMPTY>"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemSerial" "30Z90M1"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemFamily" "86-based PC"\r\nVBoxManage setextradata win7 "VBoxInternal\/Devices\/pcbios\/0\/Config\/DmiSystemUuid" "44454C4C-3000-105A-8039-B3C04F304D31"\r\n<\/pre>\n
Links:<\/strong><\/span>
\nhttps:\/\/forums.virtualbox.org\/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=21471
\nhttps:\/\/www.virtualbox.org\/ticket\/9231<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes you have a Window client sitting around running an important piece of software and the hardware is ancient. All<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-virtualbox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ls-al.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}