Make a clone of VirtualBox Machine that doesn't cause Windows Re-Activation after installing Windows

Most guides for installing Windows on VirtualBox to act as a template for quick Windows jobs tell you to take a few steps to prepare the Virtual Machine before installing Windows (the best guide I found: grahamrhay.wordpress.com; another fairly good guide: www.windowstablettv.com). Unfortunately, I didn't read these guides before installing and activating Windows on the VM I wanted to use as a template.

I want to know how to clone my already-active VM in such a way that would not require re-activation from Windows.

Looking in the template VM Definition file (the VBOX or XML file for the VM), the /VirtualBox/Machine/Hardware (XPath ID) node has no uuid attribute. But, if I try to use VBoxManage modifyvm <uuid|name> --hardwareuuid <uuid> to set a new UUID for the template VM, then the template VM loses its activation status! (Thankfully, I had made a backup of the template.) So, to accomplish my aim, I can't just follow those guides pretending that I haven't installed Windows yet.

Thankfully, I noticed something about all of my Virtual Machines that I hadn't prepared as those guides had outlined.

I ran VBoxManage showvminfo <uuid|name> and noticed that the UUID valued matched the Hardware UUID value, leading me to surmise that if any VM Definition didn't have a uuid attribute in the /VirtualBox/Machine/Hardware node, then the VM would use the "Machine UUID" value as the "Hardware UUID" value. So, for my template VM, it did have a "Hardware UUID" that I could use; I just had to find how to transfer it to any clones I would make.

To ensure that the UUID transfers, you can take one of two approaches:

• You can edit the template VM Definition file directly. The "Hardware UUID" will only transfer to clones if the /VirtualBox/Machine/Hardware has the uuid attribute. So, copy the /VirtualBox/Machine uuid attribute and add it to the /VirtualBox/Machine/Hardware uuid attribute. You probably want to re-initialize the VirtualBox machine database after this, by closing/killing any VirtualBox process you're running. (VBoxSVC sometimes lingers on Windows; you may have to kill it from the Task Manager.)
• You can clone your template and make a new template VM, and then use VBoxManage modifyvm <uuid|name> --hardwareuuid <uuid> to set the new template's "Hardware UUID" to the original template's "Machine UUID"/"Hardware UUID". I say you have to clone the VM to create a new template VM because if you try to set the "Hardware UUID" with this command on the original template, it won't add the uuid attribute to the /VirtualBox/Machine/Hardware node, since it can still imply it from the "Machine UUID", and thus won't copy this value to any clone it makes.

This powershell script does the work:

1. clone the machine that is already activated.
2. close virtualbox precesses from task manager.
3. run this script, modifing the variables to your values.

Remember that the virtual machines names are case sensitive.

$ORIGVirtualMachineName="BaseDevWin7"
$clonedVirtualMachineName="DevWin7a"
$vboxDir="c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox"
cd $vboxDir
$uid=$($($(.\VBoxManage.exe showvminfo $ORIGVirtualMachineName|select-string "Hardware UUID:").ToString()).Split())[4]
.\VBoxManage modifyvm $clonedVirtualMachineName --hardwareuuid $uid