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.

Media sharing is currently disabled, either because the sharing service is not running or your firewall settings have changed. To restart sharing, you must first confirm your sharing settings.

I tried a couple of things to get streaming to work, all resulted in no joy. Eventually I found 2 ways of getting it to work.

1) In Network and Sharing Center simply change the unidentified network to private. However when you next reboot it goes back to its prior state. This is less than ideal.

2) Disable the 2 VMware NICs. This is the option I took. Since I only use Bridged networking in my VM’s there is no impact. If you use NAT or host then this is not an option for you.

If anyone know any permanent way to make the vmware network private permanently then please let me know.