It's a shame that this thread has degenerated into flamebait for licensing debate. Please see my solution below. <div>On 5/7/07, Tomoki Taniguchi <<a href="mailto:tomoki.taniguchi@gmail.com"> tomoki.taniguchi@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I have a dual boot winxp/linux system. My windows partition has a valid license that came preinstalled with my laptop. It has passed all license validation up to this point. I used the "VMware Converter" to create a copy of the "winxp environment". I then tried running the "image" in vmware player under linux. The system starts up normally, but when I log in, Windows tells me i need a valid license. </blockquote> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> My laptop doesn't come with a Windows install CD. It came with a recovery DVD which contains an image of the of a preinstalled harddrive to save time. How can i solve this issue? </blockquote></div> Tomoki, Have you ever used BitTorrent? I'd recommend searching for and downloading a cracked version of Windows XP Home edition using BitTorrent. It sounds to me like you own a licensed copy of Windows to use on that computer. A legal technicality would prevent you from doing exactly that and might even force you to buy another license. Is this piracy? Well, Tomoki has purchased a computer and it came with Windows XP Home Edition. Essentially, the price of his license was included in the price of the computer. Now, he has decided he would like to expand his computing capabilities by using Ubuntu Linux, but he does not want to abandon Windows XP yet. So, he has purchased a licensed copy of VMware for this purpose. Does he need to buy another license for Windows in order to do it? Maybe the letter of the law says he does, but it's just not right... he already bought it. I'm no lawyer. You could probably prove me wrong in some countries and right in others by quoting the law. -- Vince