Bypassing “This program cannot run under VMWare or Virtual PC”

We had a specific application that did not want to run on as a virtual machine ( VMWare guest).

“This program cannot run under VMWare or Virtual PC”
“Sorry, this application cannot run under a Virtual Machine”

Solution?
Tell VMWare to prevent the guest from knowing its a virtual machine (VM).
Kudos to this post on superuser.com.

In this particular situation, all access to the guest was done over Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP); in other words, graphics performance was not critical.

NOTE: The modified VM will have poorer performance, especially with graphics, and VMware Tools will not work. This is an experimental configuration and not advised for long term use.

Shut down your VM. Add the following lines to the .VMX file of your VM (refer to this KB article from VMWare showing how to add these lines to different enciroments; e.g. Workstation, vSphere Client, etc.)

isolation.tools.getPtrLocation.disable = “TRUE”
isolation.tools.setPtrLocation.disable = “TRUE”
isolation.tools.setVersion.disable = “TRUE”
isolation.tools.getVersion.disable = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_directexec = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_chksimd = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_ntreloc = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_selfmod = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_reloc = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_btinout = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_btmemspace = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_btpriv = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_btseg = “TRUE”
tools.upgrade.policy = “manual”
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = “TRUE”

Power-on your VM. Remove VMWare tools.
The problematic application should launch and run without issue. Enjoy.