It has been observed that on some Windows guests running under KVM, SMBIOS 3.0 and QUEMU 8.2 are not returning a VMUUID.

This is a limitation of the technology rather than a limitation of FlexNet Embedded or FlexNet Publisher.

Older versions of QEMU used SMBIOS 2.x (32-bit entry point), whereas more recent versions of QEMU default to SMBIOS 3.0 (64-bit entry point).

This change can cause compatibility issues with some guest operating systems, like older Windows versions, which may only look for the 2.x entry point.

There are a couple of workarounds for this:

Workaround 1: Create the Guest as UEFI Firmware Rather Than Default

Create the guest as UEFI firmware rather than the default. This is the best solution, Winodws 11 requires that UEFI is used.

Workaround 2: Modify the Configuration of the VM

If the VM already exists, then there is a change that can be made to the configuration of the VM.

To do this, modify the first line of the VM’s domain XML (e.g. virsh edit <domain-name>) to include the xmlns:qemu namespace, like so:

<domain type='kvm' xmlns:qemu='http://libvirt.org/schemas/domain/qemu/1.0'>

Then add the following section:

<qemu:commandline> 
   <qemu:arg value='-machine'/> 
   <qemu:arg value='smbios-entry-point-type=32'/> 
</qemu:commandline>

This has the effect of forcing the entry point type to 32 for any legacy VMs.