As I write this, I am hopeful that one of the sysnative.com folks can give me an alternative approach to activating a working Virtual Box instance of Windows 10.1809 Home. I spent most of the afternoon today talking with MS Support and eventually was told that they could only advise that I start over again with an activated Windows XP installation on a new virtual machine instance and then upgrade the instance from Windows XP to Windows 7 to Windows 10 in order to get an activated instance of (bare-bones) Windows 10 Home. Then I'd need to re-establish my current working configuration with applications and data. I'd hope there is a better way.
Here is the back story that leads to my current state:
In late January of this year I had a working Virtual Box instance that included an activated Windows 10.1809 Home, along with a suite of applications and data. The instance depended on a working c: drive (240GB SSD) containing the OS and applications, and a working J: drive (2TB SSHD) containing the virtual disk instance file contain the VBox instance of Windows 10. Both disks were backed up multiple times, which turned out to be critical. In early February, both these disks began throwing errors, which were registered in event logs, but were not visible in normal operation. I became aware of the errors when one morning about two weeks ago, I sat down to work on the computer and found a recovery screen showing that said an unrecoverable error had occurred. With help from this forum and others, I was able to determine that both disks needed to be replaced, made the replacements, recovered the OS disk, copied all but one file back on to the data disk, and, by now, have generally restored my operating environment. The only remaining issue is the one mentioned above, my working VBox instance of Windows 10.1809 Home is not activated, and MS Support seems unable to fix the issue. So, suggestions and direct assistance are very much welcomed.
DVH
