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How often am I allowed to change the memory size for a Windows 7 VM (guest) before it requires reactivation?

Other than using Snapshots - is it possible to make Windows 7 aware that it's running inside a VM and ignore changes to the memory size for Product Activation?

user9517
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laktak
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2 Answers2

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As far as I'm aware JUST changing memory allocation won't trigger a W7 reactivation request as it requires two hardware changes to instigate that.

Chopper3
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  • When I change the memory size and then change it again the next day, will that count as just one change? Is there some way to view this change counter? – laktak Apr 13 '10 at 15:08
  • It's changes from baseline, i.e. if JUST memory is changed from the baseline (when you activated) you'll be fine, whereas you won't if you change more than two key components. – Chopper3 Apr 13 '10 at 15:23
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I don't think this is an issue - I'm running Windows 2008 and 2008R2 servers in VMs, both of which would require activation, and I'm not seeing requests for activation from memory changes.

Rob Moir
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  • Are you running in VMware or Virtual PC? How often have you changed the memory size? – laktak Apr 13 '10 at 15:09
  • Oh, VMWare ESX. I can't give you a hard figure but quite a lot on some servers where we were trying to balance memory loads well for SQL servers to perform acceptably without glomming up lots of resources on a host that could be better used for other things, especially as we wanted to use VMotion and the like. Easily 6 times or more on a couple of guest servers over 2 - 3 days. – Rob Moir Apr 13 '10 at 16:15