Win10 in VM with changing hardware

My virtual machines reside on a portable USB SSD drive. They are installed on top of VirtualBox from Oracle.
This way I can use it in my bureau with a powerful mini PC and on travel with a light power saving laptop. However I wonder whether the win10 license will work on both machines.
Iteratively I bought roughly 10 licenses, because I had no time to figure out why the old license was "already in use" and I had to use a new one.
May this happen because of switching hardware?
If so, what can I do about it? Currently I am hesitating to start Win10 on travel, fearing to violate the license again.

Expert knowledge welcome.

cereberus said:

In simple terms, 1 windows 10 licence per virtual machine. Legally, you cannot have a copy of an activated vm on two separate devices.

In the end, running Windows 10 unactivated in a vm is not that big of an issue, as it still runs fine - just limited on personalisation features.

With Windows 10 digital licenses it's pretty easy to have multiple machines activated with the same product key. For private use it is just as legal (or not) as using Windows 10 unactivated because both actions violate the EULA.

My goal is to use - legally - the same Win10 software at a powerful PC at my bureau and on travel with a laptop.

Just to be clear, I'd like to formulate the solution with my words:
I can not/shall not use the same Win10-VM on two VirtualBox installations on different hardware.
But I can - and have to - install two separately licensed Win10 VMs on the two different VirtualBox installations (and activate both to the same Microsoft account). The VMs reside on their hardware. They just share an external SSD-folder with all the data.

With this solution I fear to fail using the shared data on travel, as the resident Win10-VM may have updated software versions, changed configurations, locally saved but required intermediate data, ... compared to the travaling Win10-VM on the laptop.

Any - legal - other idea?

Why would a Windows update affect the data on the external SSD?

ngong said:

My goal is to use - legally - the same Win10 software at a powerful PC at my bureau and on travel with a laptop.

Just to be clear, I'd like to formulate the solution with my words:
I can not/shall not use the same Win10-VM on two VirtualBox installations on different hardware.
But I can - and have to - install two separately licensed Win10 VMs on the two different VirtualBox installations (and activate both to the same Microsoft account). The VMs reside on their hardware. They just share an external SSD-folder with all the data.

With this solution I fear to fail using the shared data on travel, as the resident Win10-VM may have updated software versions, changed configurations, locally saved but required intermediate data, ... compared to the travaling Win10-VM on the laptop.

Any - legal - other idea?

VM's are a bit of a "legal Minefield" since true paravirtualisation means that you are running Windows on essentially the same "Virtual hardware" - so providing you aren't running more than one instance concurrently then it's perfectly legal as you can install Windows as many times as you like on "The same machine" which might in fact be a separate physical machine. If Windows maintains activation then it's OK -- it's up to the Ms servers in my view to manage the integrity of their licenses -- just installing a VM doesn't constitute piracy or breaking licensing codes.

In the case of a Virtual machine I suspect there's not even agreement amongst Lawyers who have any knowledge of I.T as to what is "The same machine".

My feeling on this (purely as an Engineer) providing you are not blatently abusing the situation - Ms isn't going to come chasing after you as a domestic user. In any case shared SSD's or whatever have absolutely no issue in regard to Windows licenses.

Remember though on things like VMWARE = if you copy a VM to another machine then remember at first boot to check the box " I MOVED it" rather than "I copied it" because that will preserver the UUID -- if you choose "I copied it" then the VM software will generate a new UUID, which Windows WILL regard as a new machine and probably want activation.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

VM's are a bit of a "legal Minefield" since true paravirtualisation means that you are running Windows on essentially the same "Virtual hardware" - so providing you aren't running more than one instance concurrently then it's perfectly legal as you can install Windows as many times as you like on "The same machine" which might in fact be a separate physical machine. If Windows maintains activation then it's OK -- it's up to the Ms servers in my view to manage the integrity of their licenses -- just installing a VM doesn't constitute piracy or breaking licensing codes.

Not according to the terms of the EULA which says that a particular license may only be installed and activated on one machine at a time.

NavyLCDR said:

Not according to the terms of the EULA which says that a particular license may only be installed and activated on one machine at a time.

Hi there.

Without getting into splitting hairs over legalistic arguments I suppose it all comes down to "What consitutues a machine". Is a Virtual machine with essentially "Universal paravirtualised hardware" a "Different Machine" or not. Seems to me if Windows thinks it's OK and the activation servers think it's OK then it's OK. !!!

A similar analogy is : if it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck and waddles like a duck --then it's a duck. !!

I doubt in any case if Ms is going to bother with individual users -- what they don't want is 100 corporate computers and 1 copy of Windows !!!!.

Cheers
jimbo

The EULA states that a virtual machine is a separate device. I'm not saying anything about what MS will allow or care about or what is legal or not legal, only what the EULA says.