NTLite VMs and Post-install license woes

olivered

New Member
Sometimes i want to make edits to virtual machines or from a separate OS but i can’t. I can’t install windows to a machine, then mount that disk for NTlite to make changes to it- NtLite only works with either wims or the system install it is booted on.

Additionally spending activations on virtual machine configurations, which use randomized hardware ids, is a bit of a problem.

At minimum if i mount a VM drive in the host as a detachable drive NTlite should be able to work on it.

Secondly installing NTLite to every system that i want to remove some functionality which is “live only” removable is not practical in terms of licensing.

Instead NTLite could optionally integrate scripts that run after setup is complete to remove those components.
 
Hi,

1. support for deployed, non-host Windows from another partition is planned, should be done in v1.9 within a month or two with the announced ISO read-only support.
I could rush and make VM disk treated as an image within a week or two if you're willing to do the testing and give me feedback on any issues.

You can install multiple OS-es under one VM and it will keep its serials, just don't change hardware info in it, don't treat clones as the same machine.
That way one activation under it is enough, I test all the time with snapshots and VMs, without treating my activation any different so issues like that can be detected. So far it's smooth unless parameters of the VM are changed.
If I'm wrong and VMs on OS reinstalls are known to change the hardware info, let me know how to see that.

2. you're right, and with the latest addition Source - Tools - Remove Returns it is easily possible. Will add this to todo, thanks for the reminder.
 
There is no need to "spend" windows licenses on a VM. Yes, you may spend 1, but take a snapshot before sysprep and capture the snapshot image. You can mount the snapshot image directly in windows using Disk Management and is supported. Then GimageX can capture the sysprepped image, but you can delete the snapshot and make changes again and sysprep any number of times without ever reactivating your source VM. I also typically do a snapshot of the vanilla install so I can revert back to a blank (activated) state in case a change is made that cannot be easily undone.
 
we're talking about NTLite licenses, not windows licenses. Some of us dont have to deal with windows licenses.
 
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