Windows license is expired

[ryan-blunden]

1. ~/ curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | IEVMS_VERSIONS="8" bash
2. Start VM
3. Says Windows license expired (not genuine) etc

Is this normal?

[acdha]

Often, yes. See http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575 and in particular:

*Note: You may be required to activate the OS as the product key has been deactivated. This is the expected behavior. The VHDs will not pass genuine validation. Immediately after you start the Windows 7 or Windows Vista images they will request to be activated. You can cancel the request and it will login to the desktop. You can activate up to two “rearms” (type slmgr –rearm at the command prompt) which will extend the trial for another 30 days each time OR simply shutdown the VPC image and discard the changes you’ve made from undo disks to reset the image back to its initial state. By doing either of these methods, you can technically have a base image which never expires although you will never be able to permanently save any changes on these images for longer than 90 days.

[ryan-blunden]

Brilliant, thanks for clarifying.

[ryan-blunden]

I tried entering "slmgr –rearm" but it complained about the params?

[xdissent]

You have to run slmgr as admin - Right click on the command prompt item in the start menu and choose "Run as Administrator" then it should work. Of course you could just revert the VM to the "clean" snapshot in VirtualBox for the same effect. Let me know if it works so we can close out this issue.

[jeremyricketts]

"By doing either of these methods, you can technically have a base image which never expires although you will never be able to permanently save any changes on these images for longer than 90 days."

...curse you Microsoft.

[xdissent]

Truth. Well I guess they're just trying to keep me from playing Battlefield Vietnam again, and I understand that. No biggie, you can't expect them to rewrite 30 years of anti-doing-anything-useful-with-their-OS history just to satisfy our needs as developers, can you? OR CAN YOU? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_AP3SGMxxM

Either way, I'm going to submit that video as the sole defense in my litigation if they ever come after me. =)

In the meantime, do yourself a favor and revert to the clean image and be done with the whole issue. If you're relying on modifications to the VM you are probably doing something in a less than optimal way to begin with.

I'm gonna close this now so they don't take me up on the defense litigation offer...

[matt-bailey]

Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but even restoring from the 'clean' snapshot gives me the "This copy of Windows is not genuine" message...

Any suggestions?

[matt-bailey]

My bad, I just had to leave it for a few minutes for Windows to be ready :P

[aaarrrggh]

I seem to have that same issue Matt - even when I restore from the snapshot, I still have the countdown. Currently it says "18 days left to activate", and yesterday it said "19 days" etc... I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong - shouldn't restoring the snapshot sort this? Thanks...

[natethelen]

I am having the same problem. Reverted to the "clean" snapshot (that I have never touched) and I still get the error on boot saying that I have to activate and cannot login

[HughxDev]

Same issue here.

[quickredfox]

I knew this was too good to be true. Same problem, reverting to clean snapshot changes nothing.

[liluxdev]

Seriously? I've only 18 days left of ievms? No solution? This is why Microsoft is losing market: without helping developers it receives bad advertising from developers, who are IT experts an trusted by friends when they have to buy a computer.

[xdissent]

Sorry guys, it looks like this is real. MS added a hard, hard, hard time limit on the XP VMs. It's now, for sure, only good for 90 days after it is released. Not 90 days after it's downloaded, not 90 days after install, not 90 days after activation... 90 days after MS uploads the image. So if you download the image (via any method) 2 days before they replace it with a new one, you're screwed.

That's very disappointing, but there's a silverish lining - ievms re-uses the XP VM for IE6, IE7, and IE8 by default. Additionally, the XP VM is by far the smallest of the downloads, so you're getting 3 out of 5 IE versions for the price of (the smallest) one. I'm sorry I can't do more to help with this issue right now, but I'll continue to try every angle possible to make this easier.

[j5bot]

Can someone document what the process is for getting the IE 6/7/8 back after this happens? Also, I think this issue is important enough to note in the readme.

[matt-bailey]

Not sure if anyone else has pointed this out, but Microsoft are now making Win/IE VMs available for free: http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads

[j5bot]

@matt-bailey yes, they're free ... but the XP image is expiring so we have to download a new one every 90 days (based on their schedule, not ours)

I'll attempt to answer my own question...

1. cd ~/.ievms
2. rm XP (or move to archive I guess)

to install ie7 on vista and ie8 on windows 7:
3. curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env REUSE_XP="no" IEVMS_VERSIONS="6 7 8" bash

to install ie7 and ie8 on xp:
3. curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env IEVMS_VERSIONS="6 7 8" bash

[matt-bailey]

@j5bot Thanks for the clarification, I wasn't aware of that. I've not had one expire yet.

[xdissent]

Well I thought this information was accurate, but it's not. I've been doing a ton of research and experimentation in anticipation of the XP apocalypse (which was supposed to be Monday) and have discovered that MS's stated expiration scheme is totally wrong. I've got a major ievms update coming tonight or tomorrow that will address this.

[danielmahon]

Any updates to this? What's the recommended way to "rearm" a system?

[quickredfox]

@danielmahon for me nothing worked except deleting the images and re-installing from scratch. That worked. But maybe I got lucky with the dates.

[xdissent]

XP VMs are good for 30 days after first boot. Vista is good for 90 days. Win7 is good for 90 days plus 5 rearms. Win8 is good for 90 days.

Only Win7 is rearmable, which is most easily done using iectrl. If you'd like to "rearm" one of the other VMs, you'll have to reinstall it. iectrl also makes this easy: iectrl reinstall 6,7.

[naoisegolden]

+1 on including this in the Documentation. Not stating it is ignoring the elephant in the room.

[phantomwhale]

iectrl is fantastic, and totally the answer I was looking for when I hit this issue. Heartily recommend singing this from the highest hilltops (or putting it more prominently in the documentation)

[thejtate]

I use this at my office to quickly test out multiple IE versions and it's great. Wish you can just rearm it over and over though. I don't mind re-installing it when the time comes. But there are a few designers who might need this to quickly check the site, and I can't constantly re-arm or reinstall it for them. Almost considering just getting the company to spend the dough on legit windows keys.

[usmonster]

Just an update -- looks like current versions of the XP VMs are rearmable with this command (from an elevated prompt):

rundll32.exe syssetup,SetupOobeBnk

[orschiro]

I use ShutdownGuard and it prevents the virtual machine from shutting down.

Warmly,

~Robert