Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: cpuid problem in upstream qemu with kvm

[Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>]

Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 
> >>No, Windows tries to detect changes in your hardware and assumes that
> >>if too many things change, you might be a pirate and requires you to
> >>phone their offices to re-authenticate.
> >
> >'Just' the CPU is not big deal. Might hit you with two 'bad' points.
> >Network interface + CPU will require re-activation.
> 
> I think the problem is only for networked images.  For normal images, it 
> would be the same if you were running Windows natively---upgrade CPU, 
> and you risk having to do reactivation.
> 
> For networked images, does changing CPU twice count as changing one 
> thing?  If so that's not too bad, not many things are likely to change 
> in a VM beyond the CPU.
> 
> Besides, if you have networked images, it's relatively likely that 
> you're doing it for a company, hence that you have some kind of MSDN 
> subscription which grants you unlimited activations for a given product key.

Are you joking?  Even as a casual users, when would you ever run
Windows without networking these days???!  I don't think you can even
buy a computer without networking any more :-)

Even just to transfer files from host to guest, you'll typically use a
network.

Or do you mean something else by "networked images" in a company context?

Fwiw, when I have done Windows migrations for companies, they never
have MSDN subscriptions (and neither do I :-) They have purchased
Windows with the machines, and later they want to migrate those
machines into VMs. No hint of MSDN anywhere, why would they?

-- Jamie