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Some programs do not offer support for VM environments. Is there a way to trick them when using VMWare Fusion?? Say a program does a check and discovers that I'm on a VM environment, how could I change parameters in order to make this program work?

John Gardeniers
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gaudi_br
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  • What OS? Do you have any examples of such programs? I've yet to find a Windows program that won't happily run on a VM, provided the VM has suitable specs. – John Gardeniers Mar 01 '11 at 07:53
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    Please, help me violate the license for software that does not permit me to run it in a VM. – Jason Berg Mar 01 '11 at 07:54
  • "Say a program does a check and discovers that I'm on a VM environment, how could I change parameters in order to make this program work?" -- surely that would differ based on what the check was ? – Sirex Mar 01 '11 at 08:25
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    @Jason - not offering support is quite different to violating a license. – Mark Henderson Mar 01 '11 at 10:02
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    @Mark - I don't know about that. I can't think of why a software vendor would check for a VM simply because they don't support it. I think it's probably more likely be something like APC's PowerChute checking for a VM because it's not licensed to be installed on one. – Jason Berg Mar 01 '11 at 15:32
  • @Mark - thanks for the support. @Jason and @Mark - It's a bit of both. The software I'm trying to circumvent the license is not allowed on a VM and hasn't been used on one for years. However, the software is no longer supported by the vendor and we have no means to justify keeping old hardware around, which is why we've decided to implement is on a VM that would mimic the old environment. I don't see any sort of breaching on any EULA in there, but simply the vendor won't offer support for what we need to do. – gaudi_br Mar 02 '11 at 02:28

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If you'd spent any time searching through similar questions asked previously you'd have spotted that a lot of people want to do the exact opposite of what you want - they want to know if they're in a VM. VMWare have built in mechanisms to allow for programmers to know for a fact that they're running in a VM, they're not that easy to use but they are there; what I'm certain of is that they've made no attempt whatsoever to build the opposite of that into any of their code. Obviously they could suppress their APIs but there are a lot of tell-tale signs that you're in a VM, LOTS; the emulated BIOS type/version/'unprogramability', the disk controller type and NICs and most importantly CPU capability bits. Essentially it would be a pointless and frustrating job to fake out when something's in a VM, plus it would be pointless, you're an edge case and using a comparatively niche product from their portfolio.

So no, there's no way to do this.

Chopper3
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