I think they just put a bit of a barrier in the way to discourage fakery, but it's not firm enough to prevent anyone reasonably genuine or persistent getting a system authenticated.

By the way do any of you gurus know a quick and easy way of creating a desktop shortcut to launch a Hyper-V VM? It doesn't seem to be possible, though presumably you could do it with a script of some sort.

Not a guru as I don't have it, but I think this is what you want:

https://winaero.com/create-hyper-v-c...ut-windows-10/

Thanks Sean, that did enough for me. +++

I'd had a rummage online but everything I found was more complex than that - probably assumed people wanted to do more interesting things automagically.

Or maybe I won't.....I lied here:I went online to check my Bentley licence and the activation/management servers all seem to be up and running.
It reminded me that I'm actually allowed 2 installs, and each one can be activated/de-activated 6 times each calendar year.

I currently have one licence active, that's the one on XP-SP3 inside VirtualBox.
The other being spare I thought "Why not try and activate it on XP-SP3 inside Hyper-V?".
So I just did. Doing it offline is equally tortuous to the Microsoft process but it works. Another 10 minutes of tedium!

So I now have two working installations of my Bentley D2 A8/S8 manual, one each of VirtualBox and Hyper-V. +++
Due to the way VirtualBox (and hopefully Hyper-V) works you can just move (even replicate) the working VM between systems without further activation. :cool:

So it looks like my new/old laptop will be running without Oracle, just native Microsoft. VCDS and Bentley are my main tools.

Though to achieve "The Full Monty" I now need to get my hands on native Windows 10 versions of ELSAWIN and ETKA...……. :rolleyes:

I think I've sussed out why my Elsa stopped working, will have it re-installed tonight and report back.

ETKA 8.2 works fine. I'm sure MJ said she has a version, if not I can find the install for you

Mine is only version 7 but I don't touch anything modern so it doesn't matter ;)

:)

I guess no need to keep prices updated as most D2 parts are NLA

Just to add, I removed Elsawin and re-installed it again with just the Audi database (2016). I had to start from scratch and install from 4.0, then 5.0 to 5.3, install the database and then install 6.0. All working fine on Win 10 Pro 1909

EDIT: Now on Windows 10 Pro 20H2 and decided to install ETKA 8.3 which also works native

So I did indeed try that and after a couple of tweaks it worked. Thanks for the tip. +++

First I had to update VirtualBox on my old laptop, that worked fine and my existing VM's appeared and ran normally. Both are XP-SP3, one running Bentley the other ElsaWin.
The COPY function in VB isn't quite as described though, maybe due to the later version? If you follow that sequence as described it creates another VDI file which is no use.
You have to explicitly choose the file type when creating it in the chosen folder to be a .vhd.
(I don't know if you could just rename a .vdi created by that to .vhd, I didn't try that)

I then took both the .vhd and .vdi files to my "new" laptop and wondered what I had to do to set it up? Hyper-V wasn't interested in the .vdi though.
There may be other methods (I'm a total Hyper-V novice) but in the end I chose to create a new VM in Hyper-V and use the .vhd file I'd copied over as the hard disk.

You can't run it straight away - file in use errors, so need to reboot. But after that the VM launched OK, though there was a lot of "New hardware" action that I skipped through quickly.
Once I'd got through that ElsaWin launched fine. :cool:

I'm not that much in need of ElsaWin given I have Bentley, but I'll go back and see how well it works and if I can resolve the hardware driver issues easily.
Or just wait until I can get my hands on a version with D2 in that runs natively on W10.

Which I seem to have now, version 4, is that OK for D2?
I've started the install, which seems quite lengthy, and have got past the authentication step. Next I think I need to load the manufacturers data and set up various options, but that's for another day.

Elsawin? Yes any version is fine I think, it's the data that has to be newer that the car. I would only install the data you require (Audi). No point installing Gb's of SEAT/Skoda/VW if you will never use it

What is the difference between Bentley Manual and Elsawin?