Hi,
I have a small company repairing local peoples computers.
I recently took on a job to repair an Advent laptop, It turns out the hardware is mostly dead except
for a working hard drive containing Windows Vista Home premium OEM.
I made an .tib image and successfully got it converted and it boots up like a dream in VMware,
It had a lost password so I booted it up using a small Linux based Vista password reset ISO and
finally gained access to be presented with,,,,,,,, yes Vista had freaked and was now demanding activation.
It has a very reduced functionality but i got VMware tools installed so now have shared folders/network drive.
My first thought was to use the phone automated system, this failed possibly due to smashed up sticker on base of original
laptop, which i still have.
Question. How can i get this Virtual machine activated.
I know i can easily get the data off now but i would really like to take the machine all the way with VMware to another physical machine
if I can because that's half the fun isn't it?
Any suggestions at this point would be good, I decided to try and come in the back door and used IE to open up CMD windows but they all fail saying not enough memory when you try to execute anything, I even managed to copy in a very good Crack I've studied to try and circumvent the activation but this too has failed.
I thought maybe its some sort of Group policy issue, its all permissions at the end of the day.
I have the original drive in original state. The imaged O/S only got smashed after I successfully booted it I suppose?
Workstation 9, 32 bit windows 8, I've tried it with the VM stored on external drive and also on internal hard drive. On an old dell 520 desktop 