How to detect if my application is running in a vi

Question

How can I detect (.NET or Win32) if my application is running in a virtual machine?

Answer 1

Here is an example of one way to do it. It only works with Microsoft's Virtual PC and VMWare, but it's a start: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/VmDetect.aspx

Answer 2

According to Virtual PC Guy's blog post "Detecting Microsoft virtual machines", you can use WMI to check the manufacturer of the motherboard. In PowerShell:

 (gwmi Win32_BaseBoard).Manufacturer -eq "Microsoft Corporation"

Answer 3

The easiest way I found to figure out whether my C# app is running on a vmware VM or not is to check the MAC address of the NIC card(s). If it's a VMware VM it would always be: 00:50:56:XX:YY:ZZ

You may enumerate through the NICs as resolved here.