Debian dual boot with Windows 7

[David Rosenstrauch]

On 05/03/2010 09:57 AM, James Kramer wrote:
> 4.  Can I make an image of Windows 7 using Clonezilla and then
> reinstall the image in a virtual environment?

Regarding this question, the answer is quite possibly no.  If you bought 
the computer from an OEM (such as Dell) that uses Microsoft's SLP for 
activating the OS (see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Locked_Preinstallation), then when 
you run the cloned image of the system in a VM, Windows will tell you 
that it's not activated - and you won't be able to activate, since the 
VM's BIOS won't contain the needed SLP codes.

I ran into this issue when trying to run my WinXP partition under 
VirtualBox until I finally realized it wasn't possible, since Dell had 
installed SLP on the Windows installation.

HTH,

DR