basicwiz opened this issue on Feb 08, 2011 · 290 posts
DustRider posted Sun, 20 February 2011 at 10:46 PM
Quote - Well seeing as how I haven't bought a thumb drive yet and now I'm wondering if the VHD will really do what someone said it would do. I'm in no rush.
I wouldn't try it. The license generator uses the hardware id info from your hard drive, usb drive, or sd drive, and checks the id info in the license file and compares that to the hardware it is keyed to. If the values aren't the same, messiah won't start.
VHD don't have a hardware ID, but the system (windows) does generate information as if it were an actual hardware device. It could work for a long time this way, but it could also only work when first installed, and your virtual ID number could change the first time the computer is rebooted.
The greatest danger here is that you will have no physical hardware to prove that you have a valid license, and that you are not trying to run messiah concurrently on multiple machines. With a USB drive, if it dies you simply send it back to pmg and get a new key. You should never try to "key" any sort of software license that uses system hardware id info for validation to a virtual device that looks like a physiccal device on your computer (this includes a virtual machine). Sometimes, even the slightest change in the computer system will change this critical id information permanantly, and you will no longer have a valid license.
I hate to use "trust me", but seriously, trust me, I've dealt with numerous different software apps over the past 24 years, some use systems similar to what pmg uses for messiah. Virtual drives are not worth the risk!!!!!
Ohh....for people using Macs - don't use SD cards for your license file. The SD card ID info will change if you move the card to another computer (mac os doesn't use the actual card id, it's more like a virtual drive in that the id is "randomly" generated by the OS).
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