Is there any legitimate reason for a program to not run in a virtual machine?

I downloaded a program called LoginMgr. As with all programs, on first run I ran it in Sandboxie. I got a message box with this message:

Sorry, this application cannot run under a Virtual Machine.

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I have friends who use it and there are plenty of reviews online that say it's not a virus. But it just seems wrong.

sandboxie

Jon

Posted 2013-11-21T00:32:00.950

Reputation: 8 089

There are reasons for some applications to deny being run in VMs. What program are we talking about specifically? – gronostaj – 2013-11-21T00:38:52.103

It's a program my friend is trying to run called mapleninja. He isn't able to get it so he's trying to get me to help him. The website looks a bit fake so I'm pretty cautious about this.

– Jon – 2013-11-21T00:42:13.617

3I wouldn't trust that thing as far as I could throw it. – Michael Hampton – 2013-11-21T00:52:49.763

Answers

There is a number of reason, often having to do with making sure the program's memory or code isn't tampered with. Two I can think of from the top of my head:

Copy protection. Some programs do not want you to be able to edit (or debug) the code to bypass copy protection.
Cheat protection. Since this is a game, this is a likely reason. Running it in a virtual machine would make it easier to transparently edit values in the games memory without being detected.
Performance. An application should generally not do this, but the programmers might have decided that running in a VM gives poor performance, such as input to screen latency, and disallows running in a VM for this reason.

Of course, just because there are legitimate reasons that the program doesn't run in a VM, doesn't mean that it is actually safe. As always, proceed with caution.

nitro2k01

Posted 2013-11-21T00:32:00.950

Reputation: 2 259