14
6
Most guides for installing Windows on VirtualBox to act as a template for quick Windows jobs tell you to take a few steps to prepare the Virtual Machine before installing Windows (the best guide I found: grahamrhay.wordpress.com; another fairly good guide: www.windowstablettv.com). Unfortunately, I didn't read these guides before installing and activating Windows on the VM I wanted to use as a template.
I want to know how to clone my already-active VM in such a way that would not require re-activation from Windows.
Looking in the template VM Definition file (the VBOX or XML file for the VM), the /VirtualBox/Machine/Hardware
(XPath ID) node has no uuid
attribute. But, if I try to use VBoxManage modifyvm <uuid|name> --hardwareuuid <uuid>
to set a new UUID for the template VM, then the template VM loses its activation status! (Thankfully, I had made a backup of the template.) So, to accomplish my aim, I can't just follow those guides pretending that I haven't installed Windows yet.
It's not clear of which VM you're talking about in first point; also it's better to use
VBoxManage modifyvm --hardwareuuid <uuid>
– CharlesB – 2014-04-15T07:35:48.2032The
modifyvm
command will not set the/VirtualBox/Machine/Hardware
nodeuuid
attribute if you pass a UUID with the same value as the VM's/VirtalBox/Machine
nodeuuid
attribute. You must edit the VBOX file directly. – palswim – 2014-04-15T17:27:28.243