Motherboard change windows activation ?

[mpack]

Keep in mind there is a difference between OEM and Retail versions of Windows.

Yes I know. The beauty of my idea to use OEM is that the "hardware" is the same for all VM installations(*) as long as I stick with VirtualBox, plus I'm the installer on this "new hardware" - so I fit the OEM criteria nicely!

(*) Only exception: Windows running inside the VM can detect the host CPU type (see My Computer properties), since code still runs on the native CPU and hence the CPUID instruction is accurate. It would only be a single hardware component change so hopefully can never cause deactivation by itself. However other applications which depend on hardware signatures might well care about this change - there are no guarantees! It so happens that all the PCs around me that can usefully run a VM (eg. fast with lots of RAM), are all Intel dual cores.

Besides which, I specifically wanted XP for a compact general purpose VM, and the asking prices for new XP Pro retail CDs in the UK are pretty ridiculous based on my quick search yesterday (eg. UK£270 == US$500+). However I only checked Amazon.

[mpack]

I thought I would provide an update on this...

My XP Pro OEM CD arrived a couple of days later and I had no problem installing it into a new VirtualBox VM. The strange thing however is that I was never prompted to activate! Now I've heard that some OEM installs can be "pre-activated" by the installer... but I thought that was only on branded PCs and only if the OEMBIOS files in \system32 matched the actual BIOS in the host PC. Puzzling. Did MS drop activation requirement in late era XP Pro CDs?

The other possibility is that it activated without asking me as soon as it got the internet connection working. I have no way to know if that happened.