Vista EULA forbids virtualization

> Dimity, If that's what they meant they would forbid it for all versions of Vista.

Nope, they explicitly allowed to use Ultimate edition under VM & on hardware simultaneosly.

Imagine the uproar if Apple Inc was to keep their operating system from being installed on any non-Apple hardware! Scandalous!

Technically, it is possible to determine whether you are running from within a VM or not.

The "quick and dirty" way is by examining the "PCI" ID's returned by the virtualized hardware. On a "real" PC, they would return something like "Promise IDE controller" or "Creative Labs Sound Blaster audio card", but when running under VMware, it returns "VMware Generic IDE Controller" or something like that; Parallels does the same thing.

The more tricky way is achieved by running a certain extremely low level CPU microcode instruction and examining its results, which differ depending on whether you are running on a "real" or virtual system. An excellent discussion of this can be found here:

http://invisiblethings.org/papers/redpill.html

What MS dont want you doing is installing vista on a machine, installing VM software on top of that, and then installing vista ( with the same license ) in the VM.

That is, you can only install it in one place. Of course you can buy another copy, or get a more expensive edition which explicitly allows simultaneous use in a VM.

I dont think that MS was thinking about Parallels with this clause, they are thinking about virtual PC and vmware, which are both free, running on windows.

In particular, I dont think there is any issue with using Parallels to run a bootcamp install, you are not running the same license simultaneously.

If you install Vista via Boot Camp and then use it in Parallels with the Boot Camp partition as the source are you in compliance then? In this case, you are only using one copy of the installed software in either environment.

Dimity, If that's what they meant they would forbid it for all versions of Vista. They don't want you using the same license of Vista in two places. They don't need to specify a VM in order to forbid the installation of one license in two PCs.

They are specifically trying to forbid you from running Vista in a VM environment.

I guess it's a wrong interpretation.

Read:

“USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system.”

May NOT use SOFTWARE **INSTALLED** ON THE LICENSED DEVICE within a virtual system.

If software is NOT INSTALLED on the device, it's OK to use it within a virtual system. You don't install it on your Mac (unless you use BootCamp)-- you install it on the virtual machine.

EULA for Ultimate Edition claims:
"You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system on the licensed device."

This means that you may use the same software both within a virtual machine and on your device. For example, BootCamp + Parallels liked to BootCamp installation.

(P.S. I'm not a laywer.)

I have to agree with hs's interpretation of the EULA: You can run it in a VM, but not on the original hardware AND in a VM.

I can confirm that Vista Home Basic installs just fine in a Parallels VM, and that it runs and activates without a single complaint, even after you install the Parallels Tools.

Not that I care what a damn EULA says anyway. I consider them to be conditions imposed after the sale, and printing "you must agree to the EULA" on the box doesn't cut it if the EULA isn't actually printed on the box (in full). I don't live in a state that has codified EULA's into law... yet.

Microsoft trying to squeeze even more money from their customers with unreasonable requests? How out of character! On a good day, Microsoft has the corporate ethics of a crack whore. While screwing the customer, you might as well try to pick his pocket too.

Damn. And I had just pirated a copy of Vista Home. Now I've got to go download a copy of Business.