Possible to Transfer Windows 11 Key to Virtual Machine?
Hey everyone,
I am trying to set up a VM on my Linux Mint pc for Windows 11. I already have the pc dual boot linux and Windows. My goal is to set up a Windows 11 VM and then delete Windows partition from my pc. I don't want to dual boot into windows anymore, but I need it for a few applications.
Is there a way to get the key I already bought and use it for the VM I am going to set up?
Side note, what VM software do you recommend? VirtualBox seems popular, but would like some advice.
38 replies
https://massgrave.dev/
No idea, I get very bad performances
Thanks so much for the response. You said you get terrible performance?
I don't expect 1:1 performance like a dual boot but when I tried Virtual Manager (virt-man) Windows was lagging really bad
Could it have been your hardware on the host? My computer is pretty beefy
Maybe the virtualization was disabled
BIOS one? Always on. I have to see what happened
My host maybe? Ryzen 7 5800x 32GB RAM (8/16 to Windows) Installed on a SSD GPU (useful?) RX 6950XT
My guess is you didn't install virtio drivers. That should help immensely with graphic acceleration.
Does that allow directx on the VM? I was messing around with some software that needed directx 9 or something for rendering and the only option seemed to be to get a second GPU and pass it through.
Maybe. I should try again at home.
I would avoid VirtualBox because it’s from Oracle, but that’s me. KVM is close to the metal (it’s in the name: Kernel-based Virtual Machine). Takes a bit more setup (depending on your familiarity with things). I’d go there.
Or Qemu if you want a similar interface.
VGA driver sucks on KVM but it is still usable.
Soon you'll be able to use native drivers for your video card, no annoying setup needed.
You can simply use the same key to activate your VM. You can get your license key by typing this to command line
wmic path softwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKeyRetail keys are meant to be transferable across multiple computers, and even OEM keys are bound to the computer's motherboard. However if there's any problem with activating the VM feel free to use the
irm https://get.activated.win/ | iextrick, as even software audits done to corporations just take the billed license count and the PC count that uses Windows as a reference, and don't really care about how you activated Windows.If you need GPU Passthrough, use VMWare or QEMU. If you don't, any virtualisation software should do the trick.
Thanks so much! My use case is I just want to be able to run Studio One from the VM for music production. I don't think I need much GPU power for that
Be aware that hardware access from a virtual machine(for an audio interface, for example) can be jittery or slow (latency), which might make it unusable for your purposes or not. You'll have to find out.
You can pass through a dedicated PCIe USB card if latency is important.
On my desktop, I'm able to pass through the motherboard's integrated USB controller. YMMV if you try this, though. If I need to control the host (ex: to force shutdown the guest), I either use a PS/2 keyboard, SSH, or KDE Connect.
if your windows is an oem license that came with the laptop; then it's tied to the hardware and they probably won't let you re-use it for your vm; but i remember seeing some claims online that they've figure out ways around it.
I bought the license separately when I built my computer
in that case you'll probably be fine and powershell will help you get that key; i think someone else shared the commands in this post.
Thanks so much for the response
i trust that the check for my consultation fee is in the mail? lol
Already on the way lol
use virt manager if you don't want to mess around with settings; bare qemu-system-* if you have a bunch of patience
Use virt-manager (with KVM). Learn how to install guest tools, then enjoy the performance!
Activate it as shown in the comments!
Just use this and yes, your key should work. I use one of my W10 pro keys on a VM I host on my homelab proxmox.
I'm still pretty new to linux. I am using Linux Mint. Is this pretty easy to setup?
Presonus apparently has a Linux version of Studio One
https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/articles/19214558269581-Linux-Getting-Started
I saw, but apparently it's not great for full blown production yet
I don't know about your use case for specifically Studio One, but I've been using a Presonus interface with Ardour for a few months now and it's been great! No special drivers or anything needed, just plug and play!
There are ways to do it, buy per the EULA all are not allowed.
You should still do it. But be aware that you aren't supposed to.
VMware offers their Workstation hypervisor for free now. I'm able to run Windows 10 surprisingly well using that, and use relatively intensive software like Affinity Designer without any noticeable issues.
One more thing. I needed to enable SVM Mode for virtualization for my AMD CPU, but now my system won't POST. Any ideas?
Nevermind just had to hard restart
emotional rollercoaster reading these two comments
When using KVM QEMU to install windows 11 VM, had anyone seen the error "cannot load AppArmor profile libvirt" something really long like that. No idea what AppArmor is, but it won't let me install
Very old and outdated. https://massgrave.dev/ has everything you could need in regards of windows and MS office.