Install on Windows 10 VM (qemu) gives error: “Activate Reality Capture: An error has occurred, please restart the activation.”

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1

Hi,
I attempt to Reality capture on a Windows 10 virtual machine (qemu) with GPU- and CPU- passthrough. When I start the program it is terminated with the notification “Activate Reality Capture: An error has occurred, please restart the activation.” I tried to activate over CLI and restart, but I always get the same message.

Emulated machine: pc-q35-6.2
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
CPU: Intel i7 10700 
RAM (VM): 51.5 GB
Host OS: arch 5.17.1
Client OS: Windows 10

Many thanks for your help.

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Please navigate to your Internet Explorer settings (regardless of which browser you actually use). Under its SECURITY tab you can find the TRUSTED SITES menu. Add https://www.capturingreality.com and https://capturingreality.com, and hit OK to apply. 
Also make sure that the communication with capturingreality.com and www.capturingreality.com is enabled on ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) in your firewall.
Please make sure that you have the latest version of Internet Explorer (IE) installed.
When you open the page www.capturingreality.com in IE, is it displayed correctly? Does any script error appear?
Also, please, reset all zones zones to default level as it is on this image (there you can see the option for adding trusted sites):

3

Many thanks for your reply. I did all that, but nothing changed.

Also, other services like Steam work without any issue.

4

In order to troubleshoot these kinds of issues, we are using a special tool called “ActivationToolOpen.exe” you can download it here.
After downloading is finished please:

  1. Unzip this file on your desktop

  2. open cmd.exe

  3. write to Command Prompt:
    cd desktop

  4. write to Command Prompt:
    ActivationToolOpen.exe

  5. Send a screenshot of your whole Command Prompt and send us the unlockdata.txt file (this file will be generated on your Desktop). You can do the same on your different PCs if this problem occurs on more than one PC.

Required fields have to be filed and have more than 13 and less than 36 characters. 
Required fields:
IdentifyingNumber

  • this must be injected into the Virtual Machine
    Name
    UUID
  • this must be injected into the Virtual Machine
    SerialNumber
  • this is a serial number of network disk, SSD, or hard drive
  • NOTE: every disk has its own serial number

After you will file all these pieces of information you should get rid of your activation problems and errors.
This is the only way how to get proper identification for your Virtual Machines.

5

I have the same issue here. Although that above sounds like the right hint to me, I am completely lost an what it actually means.

  • The ActivationToolOpen.exe does not create a unlock.bin file for me but rather a unlockdata.txt
  • I get that those IdentiyingNumber etc need to contain information but what do you mean by “Must be injected into the VM”?
  • Once all of that works, can I just use the created .bin file to upload this to my account and activate?
6

Hi Felix, there was a mistake regarding the file. Also, I can see that your issue was solved.

7

I am in the same position. I have run ActivationToolOpen.exe… what come next?

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Hi @Ted_G1,

Please make sure that after running the ActivationToolOpen.exe file you can see the necessary information.

Required fields have to be filed and have more than 13 and less than 36 characters:

  • IdentifyingNumber
  • Name
  • UUID
  • SerialNumber
    • this is a serial number of network disk, SSD, or hard drive
    • NOTE: every disk has its own serial number
9

Hey, I found this thread while searching for an answer to the same issue as described in the original post. While the answers from the team helped me understand the underlying issue, that the licensing needs to be able to identify the system and therefore checks on multiple hardware numbers. I coul’d not find a solution for quite some time.

Finally I found a solution on how to solve this with qemu/KVM and I want to share this here in case others have the same experience and this might save them some time.

In my Windows VM .xml file (mine was located in /etc/libvirt/qemu/), I had to add two lines.

  1. I had to add <smbios mode='host'/> inside the <os> ... </os> section.

So mine now looks like this:

  <os>
    <type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-q35-7.2'>hvm</type>
    <loader readonly='yes' type='pflash'>/usr/share/OVMF/OVMF_CODE.secboot.fd</loader>
    <nvram>/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/nvram/win10-baremetal_VARS.fd</nvram>
    <boot dev='hd'/>
	<smbios mode='sysinfo'/>
  </os>

Ofcourse this might look different on your system.

  1. I had to add a serial number to my hard drive (the one with the Windows installation on it, this may be a virtual drive for you). This is done by adding a line with <serial>S21PNXAG341610V</serial> to the <disk> ... </disk> section.
    I think the S21PNXAG341610V can be some random Number or copy the number from your real Harddrive.

Mine now looks like this:

    <disk type='block' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writeback'/>
      <source dev='/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_250GB_S21PNXAG341610V'/>
      <target dev='hdc' bus='sata'/>
      <serial>S21PNXAG341610V</serial>
      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' target='0' unit='2'/>
    </disk>

After adding these lines, I checked the ActivationToolOpen.exe to see if the changes were applied to the VM. They do indeed show up in the Powershell, and I can then start RC and get the normal licensing prompt without error.

You can check out what these lines in the .xml file do at this site https://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html

1 Like
10

Thank you @Ra_Zzac for the valuable feedback!

11

I noticed I made a copy-paste mistake in the config section this should be a

<smbios mode='host'/>.