We tested it with 2 UPS’s, 2 different serial cables but still no joy. The HP Power manager software just kept saying it couldn’t detect a UPS and a red cross appeared.

In the end we discovered that the ILO was to blame.

To fix it, we connected to the ILO website and chose the administration tab.

Under the menu to the left, select settings and Access and then the options tab.

At the dropdown list for “serial command Line Interface Status” chose disabled and apply.

The ILO card needs to be restarted for changes to take effect. In order to restart it just go into network settings and change from DHCP to manual and back again and click apply.

Source : Kolltveit

In order to do it you would do the following :

- Install your flavour of windows in your vmware product.
- Install VMware tools
- Disable Windows Time Sync
- Power off the Virtual Machine
- Navigate to the folder where the Virtual Machine is stored.
- Open the .vmx file in notepad
- Add the following lines to the end of the file.

rtc.startTime = "1230800400"
tools.syncTime = "FALSE"
time.synchronize.continue = "FALSE"
time.synchronize.restore = "FALSE"
time.synchronize.resume.disk = "FALSE"
time.synchronize.shrink = "FALSE"
time.synchronize.tools.startup = "FALSE"
- Power on the VM
- Install your trial software
- Power off the VM
- Edit the .vmx file
- Change the following lines

from:
rtc.startTime = "1230800400"
to:
rtc.startTime = "1230886800"
- Power on your VM
- Start using your machine and software.

Basically the way that this works is that everytime you power on your Virtual machine, the date and time of it gets set to 2nd Jan, so you will always be on day 1 of your trial.

Obviously this might break some softwares t&c’s so be careful. Proof of concept really.