I have a dead Dell machine that was running OEM Windows XP. I built an image of the machine and ran it through VCenter convert to build a VM. When I run the converted image with VMPLAYER, the OS tells me it wants to activate. Now I understane hat the OEM version of the OS is intended to run on the piece of hardware that it was sold with, but that machine is dead.
If I purchase Windows XP, is there a way of activating the VM with the purchased XP product key? I don't want to reinstall Windows XP because reinstalling all the programs would be a real hastle and maybe even impossible.
Any suggestions?