Oracle's Virtual Box - Granted only 180 days to use my XP SP2 CD. Why?

I have always used VMWare Player and Oracle's Virtual Box to be able to use XP on my Win7 Home Premium (32bits) system.
Recently, I had to perform a Win7 clean install and as a result, I had to reinstall both Virtual players.
No problems with VMWare Player, but when installing XP on Virtual Box I was "granted" with a 180 days temporary usage of my XP, a thing that never happened previously with both virtual players.
Any help will be pretty much appreciated.

Regards,
Flores

amflores, are you installing an enterprise edition of xp?

Hello Doug,

No, just my regular XP SP2 PRO CD I used on two previous similar occasions with both Virtual Box and VMware Player installed.

Flores

Flores, try the phone activation method. The 180 day period is for enterprise.


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307890

=Flores, try the phone activation method.

Thanks Dude, I will.
I think M$ is not allowing me to use XP twice on the same machine!

LOL

Flores

I didn't realize that's what you were doing. Give me a minute, I think someone posted a way to do that.


Try this

Can I 'copy' my current install to a VM?

Dude said:

Try this

Can I 'copy' my current install to a VM?

Methods described in that thread only tell how to create a virtual machine from existing Windows setup. However, it does not solve the activation issue.

derekimo said:

Are you trying to use the same product key twice?

A good question.

Windows licences are one key - one machine. If you have for instance installed XP using a certain product key on one machine, whether physical or virtual is irrelevant, you cannot use the same key to install XP on another machine.

It might have been that you could manage it earlier without getting caught but as the time goes by the methods used by software companies in general and Microsoft in particular to find and reveal activation exploits and multiple activations with one key get better and better.

According to Windows XP EULA your scenario, one product key on two machines is not allowed.

Kari

Are you trying to use the same product key twice?

Hi derekimo,

Yes, as I always did.
I used my CD twice to install XP on both VMWare Player and VBOX on my laptop, at least three times with no problems.

This time, I installed XP on VMWare, but was granted by MS a license to use XP for only 180 days when installing it on VBOX. It never happened before.

Maybe I will try the other way around: will remove VMWare, install VBOX and then VMWare again, to see if the same happens now with VMware.
Cheers,
Flores