Fair enough — that advice doesn't apply to your case. Network access only matters once a licence check tries to phone home; a "not registered" state right after first boot means the pre-loaded licence isn't in the running system at all. So the culprit is almost always the
virtual hardware fingerprint, not the NIC.
Most likely causes, in the order I'd check them
- VMware regenerated the VM's UUID on the first boot. When you open a copied VM, Workstation/Player asks whether you moved or copied it — "I copied it" assigns a new UUID, and a licence locked to the BIOS/UUID string dies instantly. Shut the VM down fully (not suspend), then open the .vmx in a text editor and make sure these are set, keeping the original values untouched:
INI:
uuid.action = "keep"
uuid.bios = "..."
uuid.location = "..."
Also never accept "Upgrade this virtual machine" / a VM hardware compatibility upgrade prompt — that rewrites the virtual hardware and has the same effect.
- You're booting the wrong state. If the package ships a snapshot with the activated image, the pre-activated disk only exists in the snapshot chain. Extract the archive fresh and check the VM folder for the snapshot files next to the .vmdk. If those are missing (partial unzip, or the .vmdk was extracted while the .vmsn wasn't), you're booting a clean disk and there is nothing to register.
- Guest clock. If the VM was resumed/suspended, or the host date is way off, the guest can boot with a stale or future date and a time-stamped licence will refuse. Check the date/time inside Windows first and enable "Sync time with host".
- Environment change. Created under one VMware product/version and opened under another, or a host CPU vendor change (Intel to AMD), both alter what the licence sees.
Diagnostics worth 30 seconds
Check the WinOLS registration/about dialog to see whether the whole application is unlicensed or only the checksum plugins, and confirm whether the message appears at startup or when loading a project. That splits "licence gone" from "plugin set not registered" — different fixes.
One correction to my earlier tip: instead of removing or disabling the adapter, just untick
Connect at power on (or set
ethernet0.startConnected = "FALSE"). The device stays present in the hardware profile, so the fingerprint is unchanged, but the VM still has no network. Removing it entirely is the riskier move.
What I need to go further: which VMware product and version, host OS, whether you saw a "moved/copied" or an upgrade prompt, the exact wording of the dialog (a screenshot is ideal), and a listing of the VM folder so we can see whether snapshot files came out of the archive. If the archive itself is short of files, re-download from the resource page and, failing that, ping
Bin — that's an access/package issue I can't fix from here.
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View full details and download — WinOLS 4.51 (VMWare) - Full Suite with 62 Checksum Plugins
