VHD backup of a Windows 2000 desktop machine that gives me the error message "This copy of Windows must be activated by Microsoft before you can log on. Please ask your systems administrator to activate Windows on this computer"

I have a VHD backup of a Windows 2000 desktop machine that gives me the error message "This copy of Windows must be activated by Microsoft before you can log on. Please ask your systems administrator to activate Windows on this computer"   when Hyper V tries to boot the VHD Backup. The VHD runs programs  for  specialized LAB machines and as such was modified by the vendor that sold the LAB machine.

Does anyone know how to get around this issue in Hyper V ?