UEFI - Windows Product Key retrieval in Lunux

Trying to install a fresh copy of windows 8.1 or newer? or Install a copy as a virtual machine in your linux? 

On newer (win 8.1 + ) versions you won't find a sticker with the product key to install a fresh copy of windows on your machine. So you either have to retrieve it beforehand from your firmware using windows tools, or gather it after installing Linux on the drive. 

You have paid for this license and the Product key is in your UEFI firmware. You can retrieve this and write it into a text-file by typing the following command in a terminal screen.

sudo hexdump -s 56 -e ' "MSDM key: " /29 "%s\n" ' /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM > /home/[username]/filename.txt

Note: 
Usually your copy of windows is pre-installed on your original hardware, in case of disk-failure or disk-swap, you might need to download a fresh copy (.iso-file) from Microsoft. (this will only work if you download the correct version = same as your original version. otherwise your product key will not work) 

Re-size VirtualBox Disk-Images

The native disk-file format for VirtualBox is .vdi, but VirtualBox is fully operational with other file formats as well.  ( .vdmk .vhd .ovf .ova .vdi ...)

However, if you need to re-size your virtual disk image, you might need to convert your file. To my knowledge, currently the re-size function within VirtualBox image manager works best with .vdi images.

In my case I was using a vmWare image of Windows 7 on my Ubuntu 12.04 / 14.04 LTS host, so I cloned my disk first to .vdi before re-sizing.

Windows XP end of support: What to do?

Blogs, magazines and news are full of it; and yet here is another discussion about the Apocalypse of Windows XP.  Or maybe not.

I'm not your typical blogger, expressing and debating my point of view on everything. So by writing anything else but instruction notes or procedures, I'm going way out of my comfort zone. But I'm gonna try anyway.

After the big millennium scare, this is probably the biggest money ticket for ICT in years. Finally XP is dead, and it seems 90+% of the advice out there, is one that goes deep in your pockets.  Either upgrade to the new windows version (and all the programs, drivers, and devices that won't work in windows 7 or 8) , or buy a new PC with windows 8 on it, (including all the needed upgrades of your existing software that might or might not work in windows 8) . I'm not going to claim that these options won't put you back in the game, (the game of endless upgrades and costs) but I rather give you some alternatives, and maybe some ideas. (Non exhausted list of options)

Windows XP not updating

Sometimes (after recovery or changes in system when running in Virtual Box) windows will stop updating.

The following procedure will fix that.