Apologies for the long first post.

Well, just bought MS 10 EOD after consulting with an online sales guy.

I only run Windows XP as a guest under VMWare; I don't currently have spare hardware to dedicate to it. So imagine my surprise when my $500 product installs fine; but flatly states "will not run under VMWare" when I attempt to launch it.

There's no documentation readily available that tells a purchaser this. Nor did the sales guy bring it up. OS requirements from

https://www.metastock.com/products/endofday/metastock/?requirements

are "Windows Vista, XP (Service Pack 1 or higher), or 2000 (SP 4 or higher)" - nothing about VMWare there as of today.

I don't think this is a function of the virtualization itself (MS 10 EOD
appears to have no detection/cripple code for Parallels; and seems
to work fine in that environment). It looks like an arbitrary decision
for whatever reason by Equis.

EDIT: I tried activation under Parallels; it activated successfully.
Have not tried under VirtualBox because I have to remove it from
Parallels first; Parallels on my hardware (AMD64) seems very unstable.

Virtualization is the next Big Thing(tm); that is, if it's not the _current_
Big Thing(tm). I'm sure there are other people who won't upgrade because of this; and equally sure there are people who will be asking for their money back after they find out they have licenced something that Just Doesn't Work despite meeting the formal requirement spec.

Equis, i want what I've been sold - MS 10 that works on the Windows XP operating system. Whether Windows is directly accessing hardware or a hypervisor is none of MS 10's business!

Incidentally; as I said, MS 10 seems to run fine under XP as a guest of Parallels; so for those of you looking for a virtualized solution this may be of some help.

Anybody have any suggestions? Do I just ask for my money back?

Regards,

Saliya

Hi Pyradius,

Thanks for your prompt response.

Fair enough that there are no plans to remove the activation software; perhaps there should be plans to make the activation software work correctly in a virtual environment? :) But I digress.

EDIT: Received my licence key, thought I'd try activating the software under XP running in Parallels. Looks like the activation works fine... which kind of conflicts with your post saying that activation can't work in a virtual environment. Can you please provide more information about this non-virtual-compatible hard disk access and perhaps elaborate on why it seems to have worked under Parallels but not under VMWare?

Once again, looks like a purely "technical" restriction from Equis' point of view. And if that's the case; surely this restriction should be limited only to eval copies of the software (that is, make a different binary available to paying customers)...

If I'm wrong and the activation hasn't worked, it looks like there are a few options for me:

END EDIT

* purchase dedicated hardware and run a dedicated instance of the Windows XP operating system for MetaStock
* discard my plans with MetaStock and use a competing product
* purchase an older copy of MetaStock that will work correctly virtualised

Of these options, I'd prefer the third - are there any legal methods for me to acquire say MS 9.x? Would it be more appropriate to take this discussion point-to-point?

Regards,

Saliya

Hi Pyradius,

Thanks for your response once again.

Well, I have my MS 10 EOD running perfectly in a virtual environment now. Activation definitely didn't write directly to the MBR and it seems to have worked perfectly (time will tell).

FYI: Parallels is certainly not a dual-boot environment - take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/...ison_of_virtual_machines if you're interested.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the reasons for MS 10 not working under VMWare and/or VirtualPC have more to do with people attempting to evade activation than the actual technical activation process.

Regardless of the reasons; if there are specific virtual environments that disable MS 10; those should all be listed in the OS requirements pages.
People shouldn't find out _after_ they buy the product that it's simply not going to work. I'd appreciate it if you could pass these comments upstream.

Now all I'm hoping is that no "upgrades" are released which will break my working system...

Saliya

In theory this should still work as long as there is an accessible primary hard drive still on the PC that is using the Ramdisk setup, though I am sure sure we can "officially" support running it this way.

I saw last year a user has posted the problem of cannot run MS10 under VMware, is the same issue not fixed yet?