False positive on VM for Windows 11 on Dell XPSAnswered

We have the latest versions of TurboActivate built into our app.  We have had many customers saying that they cannot trial our software on physical machines running Windows 11.  To be sure, we have the flag that prevents trials in VMs from running.

To verify the experience our customers have, I procured a fresh new Dell XPS laptop running Windows 11.  I installed our application, and sure enough I could not trial it because the app has that flag to NOT allow trials on VMs.

So, I visited the Q&A page that is posted on the help area of this site.  I have done all of the following:

1.  Disabled “Windows Hypervisor Platform” from the "Turn Windows features on or off" dialog.

2.  Disabled “Virtual Machine Platform” from the “Turn Windows features on or off” dialog.

3.  Successfully ran the following command from an Administrator command prompt: bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off 

4.  Disabled all virtualization options from the Intel BIOS of the laptop.

Still, when I run the trial, TurboActivate assumes the physical machine is a virtual machine.

To be sure, there is no “Hyper-V” option nor “Windows Defender Application Guard” option in the “Turn Windows features on or off” as it appears in the screenshot in the help area.

What we'll do is likely just allow verified trials to work in VMs, but it's not ideal for us.

I'm not looking for answers, I'm just leaving a note: the singular flaw I see with LimeLM is this VM detection feature.  It just does not work properly on Windows given what Microsoft has done with security the last few years.  Even if your suggestions did work, it's ALOT to ask an end-user to disable all of these features.  It makes them feel like their machine is more vulnerable.  I think you should strongly consider just letting folks know about the MS limitations for VM detection instead of advising developers that it's possible.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that it should be advised that on Windows, developers need to ensure that trials should work on VMs.

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Answer

The latest version of TurboActivate detects VMs correctly. We err on the side of false-negative (that is, reporting a VM as a real computer) if our algorithms aren't 100% sure. It's almost certainly the case that the user has Hyper-V or Bios VM enabled. Yes, it's a pain in the ass to disable (if that's the route you and the customer want to take).

Also, our help articles give you multiple options (including just allowing activations on VMs if you want that).

Thanks Wyatt,

In this case, I am the user.  I did everything that is suggested from the FAQ and it still did not work for trials.  I understand that licensing can be handled in a variety of ways, and we have implemented TFS, but we lose alot of credibility when we say that they have a free 30-day trial, and a Windows user cannot hit-the-ground-running.

It's okay, we're just going to allow trials on VMs.  Not ideal, but we would rather the application get seeded on as many machines as possible.

Best,

Arie

Arie,
Thank you so much for this post. We ran into the same issue with another product that was detecting a brand new Lenovo laptop as a VM. Our fix was turning off DMA and the Intel Virtualization options in the bios. Once that was done the software activated successfully. 

Cheers! Thanks very much for this post! 

Adam

We gave up here, and allow VM for anyone that has bought a copy - too many users with that issues - not worth the worry

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