i sort of went overboard trying this all out but once you have vmware and an o/s in there with the program installed, could you let me know if it works for you - at this point i'd just like to know everything is at least going to happen for a 30 day period. putting in another o/s and then the program will likely mean 1.25 hrs max work each time but if it gets you use of the program then it can be worth the effort.

when you create a new instance of win7 or whatever o/s, you may want to asap turn off windows updates. the program wanted to install a current .net framework on my vmware but it initiated the process itself, then i had to reboot to complete the process.

if you don't disable win7 microsoft updates thats' going to add too much time to it all.

with win10... if you install the most current v1909 you can trigger it to turn off updates for up to 5 weeks in the update function; versions lower than 1909 you can't do that so it may try to update and... ugh you don't want to do that.

i have no experience with v8/8.1 for windows so i have no comment on that.

hope it all works out well for you.