VMWare & WinXP

["Jason T. Hallahan" <jthallah () gmail com>]

Hello and good day,

I recently purchased a laptop from Dell with Win XP Professional on it
for the purpose of setting up a VMWare virtual network for
honeypot/pen-testing purposes. However, when I go to install my new
copy of XP (which is the host OS of my box) in a virtual machine, it
won't activate. I tried calling Microsoft and going through the
automated process on the phone, but it says my installation is
invalid. Is there any way around this (I am not trying to cheat
Microsoft here) or any way to speak to a Microsoft representation to
explain my situation? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you and best regards!

- Jason