How to detect install is running on a VM?

Question

Anyone have any ideas on how to detect if an installation is running on a virtual machine (regardless of VM vendor such as Microsoft, VMWare, Citrix, etc.)?

Answer 1

I don't know, but if you figure it out, please post back the answer. You might get an answer if you post in the forums over at VMWare. It might be vendor-specific.

RobinDotNet

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Answer 2

Hi ColbyRingeisen,

When an installation starts on a machine, the Windows Installer Windows service is started. The Windows Installer service will stop automatically shortly after the installation finishes.

So a possible solution is to retrieve the status of the Windows Installer service on the VM to detect whether an installation is running.

You can use the ServiceController.GetServices method to get all services available first and then get the Windows Installer service from the returned array. Use the ServiceController.Status property to get the status of the Windows Installer service.

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,
Linda Liu

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Answer 3

Linda Liu,

I think you misunderstand what I'm trying to do.  I'm not trying to detect if the installation is running, I'm trying to detect if it is being installed to a virtual machine as opposed to a physical machine (IOW, is the user installing my application to a VM or to a physical machine).

Basically, I need to dynamically disable the installation of some optional driver components included in my MSI package that should never be installed on a virtual machine.  I know how to enable/disable the install of the components but I just don't know how to detect whether the target system is a VM or a physical machine.  I also already have a C++ custom action DLL included in the package so I just need to know if there are any APIs that can be used to detect if the system is a VM or a physical machine.

Answer 4

See if this helps:
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/10/27/484479.aspx 

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Phil Wilson

Answer 5

Thanks to everyone who replied.  Below is a summary list of the URLs I bookmarked:

Bookmarks

codeproject Detect if your program is running inside a Virtual Machine. Free source code and programming help.url

Detección de Virtual Servers hilpers.url

How an application can detect if is running inside a Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machine virtualization.info.url

How an application can detect if is running inside a VMware virtual machine virtualization.info.url

How to detect install is running on a VM.url

How to detect virtual machines softwares virtualization.info.url

invisiblethings.org - Red Pill.url

trapkit.de - ScoopyNG.url

trapkit.de - VMM.url

Virtual PC Guy's WebLog Detecting Microsoft virtual machines.url

Virtualization – A Quick Tutorial « Whiteboard.url

 

Answer 6

There is a wiki topic for this at: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/942.aspx 

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tony soper