Does VMWare Fusion, Virtual PC, Parallels, or VirtualBox not let a program detects that it is a Virtual PC?

Question

I wanted to install a program called PPS to watch tv, but heard that there were security risk with an earlier version of the program, so I wanted to install it on a Virtual PC.

However, after installing, it will not run. It looks like it detected the PC is a virtual PC and so it won't run. Is there any way to run a virtual PC so that the program cannot detect that it is a virtual PC?

Answer 1

there are similar questions on stackoverflow which mostly cover how to detect that you are running inside a vm:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39533/how-to-identify-that-youre-running-under-a-vm
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2375658/detect-when-application-is-running-in-a-vm-environment

so, to detect that you are inside a vm is mostly a matter of:

• triggering some code which behaves a bit differently when running on a "real" cpu
• checking the hardware id's of virtual devices (eg, the hardware id of the 'network card' is known .. if the program finds it it 'knows' it runs inside a vm)

to answer your question: i think it is always possible to detect that you are inside a virtual machine. so, you have to either use another program or find out, why PPS does not want to be started inside a vm (maybe some 'hardware' is missing).