MICROSOFT ROK LICENSE ON HYPER-V GUEST

May 9, 2019

You all have dealt with this situation. You bought a new box for a customer. Then you adjust your plans, just because Hyper-V is cool. You think… Lets install Hyper-V on that box and create some VM’s on it. One with the SBS or Essentials Server and a few additional VM’s

Then you start to to setup the hardware, make sure you enabled Virtualization on that ML10 and off you go.

Installation of Hyper-V is a breath. Done in a few minutes. You place the Essentials media in the server and…

BANG

What the heck? The Essentials Server, deliverd with your HP Proliant ML10, is not gonne work..

Why?

The reason is quite simple. The installation Media of those ROK licences are checking some registry keys.

So this is something we can resolve.

If you are/were installing this on Hyper-V 2008R2

Open the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization
Add a registry key of the type REG_SZ and name it BiosLockString
Enter the value : “Hewlett-Packard ” (Warning: After Hewlett-Packard there must be 17 white spaces!)

If you are/were installing this on Hyper-V 2012:

Open the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization
Add a registry key of the type REG_SZ and name it BiosLockString
Enter the value : “Hewlett-Packard ” (Warning: After Hewlett-Packard there must be 30 white spaces!)

If you want to install ROK licences on Hyper-V 2016/2019

I cannot help you with this at this moment. I have not done this yet. I presume the last option would work.

Cheers! and Happy HyperV-ing.

Update 20230201:

Someone informed me that this is still working for ROK licences on:

HyperV 2022 ROK HyperV with a Server 2022 Essentials ROK guest
“FUJITSU_________________________” (so 25 underline characters instead of White Spaces)
“LENOVO_________________________” (so 24 underline characters instead of White Spaces)
Conclusion:
– The total length for the BiosLockString is 32 characters
– Because it works for 2022, I Assume it will work for 2019 also.

More information can/could be found here:

https://techcommunity.ts.fujitsu.com/en/server.html/do/showtopic?forumtopic_id=94