Reusing a retail license when the original activation is on a VirtualBox VM that

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I needed an install of Windows 7 Pro to run a specific program that is unusable under later versions.  I created a VM on my Windows 11 computer using Oracle VirtualBox and did a new install of W7 Pro and activated it with a new retail license.  The VM became unusable and had to be recreated.  Creating a new one was not a problem but the license will not activate on the new VM even though all the parameters and settings on the recreated VM are identical to the original and on the same host.   I know how to remove the license from old installs when you intentionally want to move a license but there was not an opportunity to remove it from the original VM before it was destroyed.  Anyone had this problem??  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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As I understand it, Microsoft shut down the activation servers a good while back and you are most likely not going to be able to activate a new install in spite of a legitimate license.

Do you have an old copy of the VM before it died (large image file)? My suggestion would be to install the same VM software and copy the old VM file back to the computer. Then try a repair install. I think Win7 offered that option (not to be confused with what we mean in terms of repair install as applied to Win10/11). I think I remember something along those lines offered on the original install DVDs.

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You should be able to use telephone activation.  If the robot declines to activate the machine, there should be an option to speak to a human being to explain the situation.

As far as I know, the activation servers are still running, but once you’ve used a retail key to activate a machine, a period of time (180 days?) must elapse before you can use it to activate a new machine online.

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When you say that the parameters and settings are identical does that include the VírtualBox UUIDs for the machine and the virtual hard drive (.vdi file)?

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