1w ago

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.

40 comments

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.

Open PowerShell (Not CMD). To do that, right-click on the Windows start menu and select PowerShell or Terminal.
Copy and paste the code below and press enter

irm https://get.activated.win/ | iex
You will see the activation options. Choose [1] HWID for Windows activation. Choose [2] Ohook for Office activation.
That's all
https://massgrave.dev/
Side note, what VM software do you recommend? VirtualBox seems popular, but would like some advice.
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

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.

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 OA3xOriginalProductKey
Retail 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/ | iex trick, 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.

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.

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.

You can keep your existing partition, and just mount the disk in a libvirt/qemu on kvm setup. Here is a good place to start
- I'm still pretty new to linux. I am using Linux Mint. Is this pretty easy to setup?
  
  If you know how to use VB, using Virtmanager wouldn't be too different. You'll have to find how these are packaged for your distribution, but the instructions for everything else on the wiki will be helpful regardless of the distro

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!

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

https://github.com/kkkgo/KMS_VL_ALL
You're welcome 🤗
- Very old and outdated. https://massgrave.dev/ has everything you could need in regards of windows and MS office.

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

40 comments